Eurogamer escribió:Team Ninja chief Tomonobu Itagaki has spoken of his 'anxiety' over Microsoft's decision to stick with the DVD disc format on its forthcoming Xbox 360 console, expressing concerns that developers will have difficulties squeezing high-definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB disc.
Speaking to Famitsu magazine, Itagaki said that the DVD format "brings a bit of anxiety" since Japanese developers - unlike Americans and Europeans - tend to prefer prerendered cutscenes over real-time.
"The screen resolution for Xbox 360 games will be in high definition, so the prerendered movies are going to be pretty large," commented Itagaki.
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"If we encoded the Dead or Alive 4 trailer from E3 in high definition in a quality acceptable to us, it will easily be about 2GB." (Xbox 360 DVDs will hold 9GB of data.)
"With DOA4, we'll be using the disc's capacity to its full extent. We started development on DOA4 pretty early, and we didn't know what disc format the Xbox 360 was going to adopt. So when we learned about it, we were really knocked out."
However, he seemed happy enough with the 360's processing power, despite the fact that the triple-core IBM PowerPC design - which he described as "a buffed-up Sega Saturn" - could make it things a little tricky.
"The Xbox 360 is said to be a machine that's easy to develop for, but that's because it has a good line-up of middleware and infrastructure... If you try to take advantage of the Xbox 360's full hardware specs, you'll find out about the difficulty in programming for a multicore machine," he reckoned.
However, "Even if just a single core is used for a game, it will still be several times more powerful than machines up until now. But we aren't satisfied at that kind of level," admitted Itagaki.
"Our programmers are having fun playing around with the machine. They're swinging around all the cores and making a game that shows the powers of the Xbox 360."
Itagaki went on to confirm reports that Microsoft will make a major announcement in Japan later this month. He said Team Ninja had yet to decide whether it will make a new trailer to coincide with the announcement, or "if we should go straight ahead to work on the completion of the game."
So what of the rumours that Team Ninja will dump the Xbox 360 in favour of the PS3 once Sony's console launches? "Team Ninja will not disappoint their fans," offered Itagaki, cryptically. Besides, he said, "We're too busy on the development of DOA4 to think about anything else."
Itagaki reckoned Sony should be commended for attempting to "create a computer that comes from Japan" - providing it lives up to the suggested hardware specs. "A machine that doesn't run according to its promised CPU frequency is out of the question," he added.
En declaraciones a la revista Famitsu, Itagaki dijo que el formato en DVD "trae algo de nerviosismo" puesto que los desarrolladores japoneses, al contrario que europeos y americanos, tienden a preferir cinematicas pre-renderizadas sobre las generadas en tiempo real.
"La resolucion de pantalla para los juegos de XBOX 360 sera en alta definicion, asi que las peliculas pre-renderizadas van a ser bastante grandes." Comento Itagaki.
"Si codificaramos el trailer de Dead or Alive 4 del E3 en alta definicion con una calidad aceptable para nosotros, facilmente alcanzaria los 2GB." (Los DVD de XBOX 360 contendran hasta 9GB de datos.)
"Con Dead or Alive 4 usaremos los discos a su maxima amplitud. Empezamos a desarrollar DOA4 bastante pronto y no sabiamos que formato de disco iba a adoptar X360, asi que cuando lo supimos nos quedamos K.O."
Sin embargo, parecia bastante contento con el poder de proceso de X360, pese al hecho del diseño de triple nucleo del IBM Power PC, el cual describio como "una Sega Saturn aumentada", que podria poner las cosas un poco complicadas.
"Se dice que X360 es una maquina facil para la que desarrollar, pero eso es porque tiene una buena linea de middle-ware e infraestructura... Si tratas de aprovechar los specs de X360 al completo, descubriras las dificultades de programar para una maquina multinucleo" Opinaba él.
Sin embargo, "Aunque solo utilizaramos un solo nucleo para un juego, seguiria siendo varias veces mas potente que las maquinas actuales. Pero nosotros no estamos satisfechos a ese tipo de nivel," admitió Itagaki.