CES 2001: Stormfront Studios and the Xbox

For more than a decade, Stormfront Studios has been developing quality games across the entire spectrum of platforms. The Northern California-based company has been responsible for recognizable game series such as Madden, Tony La Russa Baseball, Mario Andretti Racing, and Neverwinter Nights - so it's little wonder that Stormfront was chosen by Microsoft to be a first-party developer for the Xbox. We sat down with Stormfront president Don Daglow to talk about many things Xbox, including this morning's unveiling, developing on the Microsoft console, and the company's as-of-yet unannounced Xbox game.

GameSpot: Don, why has Stormfront chosen to develop on the Xbox? Will you develop for other consoles as well?

Don Daglow: We're developing games for the Xbox and for PlayStation 2, and I expect we'll do Gamecube down the road as well. With more than 80 people on six teams, Stormfront has always chosen to work on multiple machines in a variety of game genres in order to distribute the risk inherent in production.

In the case of the Xbox, we love being able to leverage our PC experience into a true console environment. The graphics power of the box, the presence of the hard drive, and the focus on broadband connections are all big positives of working on the Xbox.

GS: How easy is it to develop for the Xbox as opposed to the PC? As opposed to the PlayStation 2?

DD: Whenever you work on first-wave games for a next-gen system, it's like being a company of marines on the Normandy beaches on D day. You don't really know what hazards await you until you get on the beach, then past the first line of defense, the second line, and so on. This has been true through all of game history, going back to when I was director of game development for Intellivision in the early '80s. In general, the greater the system's "upside" in potential power compared with prior generations, the tougher the original wave of projects will be to create.

What's great about both the Xbox and PlayStation 2 is that we're not reliving the disaster of the Amiga, a great late-'80s machine that was released before its design was truly complete. One of my Amiga projects once lost three months on its schedule because a systems software update blindsided us and made fundamental changes in the platform. Both Microsoft and Sony have been very strong in working with us to make our development platform stable and professional. They understand that this is essential on systems of this complexity and power.

It certainly does help that the Xbox has a PC heritage, since any familiar territory in a new wilderness makes navigation easier!

GS: So, hypothetically speaking, how easy would it be to port over an Xbox game onto the PC, and vice versa?

DD: There's no doubt that the Xbox's PC roots make it easier to move games from PC to Xbox than between other systems. This is similar to when we had an advantage moving games back and forth between Commodore 64, Apple II, and the Atari 800, because all three machines were based on the 6502 processor.

But by focusing narrowly on this issue, I think we're missing a critical point. It isn't just the machine that's different from a PC. The Xbox consumer is different as well.

The PC lives in the den, and it is usually a dual-use productivity and entertainment machine. The Xbox lives in the living room and serves as part of the family's entertainment system. The PC interface is based on a mouse and keyboard. The Xbox uses a controller. Many families own both a PC and a game console and play different kinds of games on each.

Stormfront's view is that we're designing games for game players, not for platforms. If some games move easily from one set of players to another, then porting issues matter. But many games won't move well between those worlds, so we shouldn't look at portability as an all-defining issue.

GS: One of the most hyped components of the Xbox is Nvidia's GPU. Is it really all that impressive?

DD: The short answer is "Hell, yes!" But that ignores an important issue. I think the significance of all these new processors is that they represent a fundamental change in the way we make games. When I was writing 4K cartridges on the Intellivision in 1981, we always felt that what limited our ability to create games was the hardware. When faster processors came along, it didn't matter that the Amiga was so much more powerful than the Commodore 64 or that the PlayStation was so much stronger than the Genesis or that the size and speed of PC games increased 1000 percent. We still complained: There wasn't enough RAM, the cartridges were too small, the processor was too slow, etc.

With all of these next-gen machines, we are much more likely to be restricted by budget and schedule than we are by the processors themselves. I hear a lot of great ideas, where we conclude that the game would cost too much for a publisher to make any money on it. I don't hear a lot of ideas where someone says, "Yeah, but the PlayStation 2 or the Xbox can't do that."

But just give us time. After we've shipped a couple of titles on each of these boxes, we'll still find something to complain about!

GS: But what about raw speed and polygon-crunching performance? Bill Gates just said that the Nvidia GPU is three times faster than the Xbox's closest competitor. Is that true?

DD: I think that once the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Gamecube are all on the market, we'll see some definitions of speed in which each excels.

That said, the speed of processors in general continues to increase markedly each year. The moment any console manufacturer ships its product, they know that the base speed of the next console to ship after theirs will be higher.

Success in the console marketplace is not just a matter of processor speed. It's a combination of how many popular games can be built on a machine, how many are available, how effectively the hardware and software are marketed, and how effectively both are delivered through retail channels.

Beta was better than VHS, Intellivision was better than Atari, and yet each ran in second place in the race for sales. Neither our Xbox nor our PlayStation 2 teams believes that there is room for anything less than the highest quality games we can build.

GS: Then what does developing on the Xbox afford you that development on other platforms don't?

DD: First of all, it is an especially comfortable platform for programmers with PC experience.

Second, we love working on the Xbox because we're doing a Microsoft-branded game, which means we have the huge power of Microsoft's marketing and distribution behind our title. If you build a good game, these guys are really good at promoting and selling it.

Another advantage is the production team inside Microsoft with whom we're working. They're veteran gamers with many years of experience in the industry. They know what it's like to develop high-profile titles, and they've been very effective partners with us working on the game.

GS: What do you think of the console's architecture as compared with the Gamecube's, Dreamcast's, and PlayStation 2's?

DD: I think the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Gamecube are all so powerful that we won't have a good perspective on what kinds of games are best on each until we see the second wave of products come through. Right now, complaining about limitations on these boxes is like being in Wyoming and lamenting the lack of open space.

GS: What about the controller? How does its design complement the control interface of your game?

DD: [Our] game has been designed from the ground up for the Xbox, so it's been built around the Xbox controller since day one.

GS: How are you making use of the hard drive?

DD: The benefits of the hard drive are all pretty straightforward, since we already use the hard drive on PC games.

GS: Will you be making use of any of the Xbox's connectivity features?

DD: We're not commenting on any specifics about the game just yet. In general, the Xbox's focus on broadband connectivity is very attractive, since Stormfront has been doing online projects since 1988.

GS: Do you think the market will be big enough to support four consoles in addition to the PC platform? If not, who will be the odd man out?

DD: History says no, that usually no more than two console winners can coexist in the living room. Right now, the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Gamecube have so much going for them that I don't think anyone can predict how the battle will turn out. As game designers, we like to think that the platform with the best games will be number one.

Since we're already working on the Xbox and PlayStation 2, it's natural that we feel most attached to those machines.

GS: Would you say that Microsoft is doing anything wrong with the Xbox?

DD: It's a real compliment to Microsoft that no answer to "what they're doing wrong" readily comes to mind. They've made a lot of common sense, consumer-focused decisions as they've developed the machine.

GS: Thanks, Don.