On-Site GDC 2004 Report with Photo Gallery

Our West Coast reporter, Brian Nakamoto, was able to attend the Game Developers Conference 2004 in the San Jose, CA, Conference Center yesterday and attend the Microsoft keynote. He said he saw nothing of Apple and ATI was not openly showing off its promised Radeon 9800XT for the Mac (256 MB VRAM). Nvidia's big announcement on its next hot game chip comes in a couple of weeks so nothing new was displayed. According to Brian,

Since the launch of the Xbox, the annual Game Developers Conference has seemed more like the Microsoft Game Developers Conference with Sony and Nintendo playing second fiddle in the face of Microsoft's developer relations juggernaut. Although I won't be able to attend due to scheduling conflicts, it will be interesting to see what Sony chooses to highlight in their keynote tomorrow.

Microsoft used their keynote to continue their long-term plan to make game development easier and more cost-effective by (big surprise) using their software platform. To that end, they announced XNA today which unifies new and existing development tools across Microsoft's major gaming platforms: Xbox, Windows (read: Longhorn), and mobile (e.g. PocketPC). By making game development easier, Microsoft attacks the perceived difficulty of coding for the PS2. Creating a unified game platform--notably between Xbox and Windows--potentially opens up developers to an installed base that could compete with Sony.

Except for PowerBook-toting game developers, Apple did not have a conspicuous presence at the conference. Hopefully, tools that make porting XNA technologies such as DirectX to Mac OS X counterparts like OpenGL will continue to be made available by third parties.

There remain some game genres such as real-time strategy games that I'd rather play on my Mac than even on next generation networked console systems coupled with the all-digital home theater. The refreshing competition among the game console companies is great for game fanatics in general. Should the rumored Xbox price drop come true around May, I may have to actually purchase (my company paid for Microsoft Office) a Microsoft product once Halo 2 ships.

Here is Brian's photo gallery.