- 2,665
Not necessarily.
To begin work on a title all you need is an idea. They could very well have teams working, rendering cars in a certain program at a hugely high number of polygons (I'm thinking tens, hundreds of thousands). They could have a team already capturing sound data because sound isn't going to change much come the new console. They could be working on testing, gathering performance statistics. They could also be working on one of the most important aspects - licensing. There's a LOT of data they could be collecting and collating already, so that when they finally get a PS3 development kit they don't have to waste time gathering information, they can just start making the game engine and getting all the information they already have in there.
A game engine is to a game what an operating system is to a computer. That's a somewhat reasonable analogy I think. The game engine provides the way in which things interact. It provides a system for loading cars, tracks, adding textures, defining physics, controlling the AI, controlling all aspects of the game. There's no real way this could be under construction in anything but a conceptual phase... However...
There are actually hardware devices out there that let you simulate hardware before you create it. I remember a while ago reading about a machine that essentially lets you emulate a video card processor before you physically make one. You tell this box how your processor will be constructed and it emulates the architecture, albeit at about 1 thousandth the speed of a real chip. Still, I doubt they would be employing anything like this this early in the development cycle. Sony may be playing with one over at IBM, but not PD.
The reason I doubted PD would already be working on GT5 was because I didn't think they would want to compromise their efforts by splitting into two teams. That means KY has two projects to coordinate at once, perhaps more, let's face it, he's not a man to delegate duty to anyone, he likes to control the direction himself.
To begin work on a title all you need is an idea. They could very well have teams working, rendering cars in a certain program at a hugely high number of polygons (I'm thinking tens, hundreds of thousands). They could have a team already capturing sound data because sound isn't going to change much come the new console. They could be working on testing, gathering performance statistics. They could also be working on one of the most important aspects - licensing. There's a LOT of data they could be collecting and collating already, so that when they finally get a PS3 development kit they don't have to waste time gathering information, they can just start making the game engine and getting all the information they already have in there.
A game engine is to a game what an operating system is to a computer. That's a somewhat reasonable analogy I think. The game engine provides the way in which things interact. It provides a system for loading cars, tracks, adding textures, defining physics, controlling the AI, controlling all aspects of the game. There's no real way this could be under construction in anything but a conceptual phase... However...
There are actually hardware devices out there that let you simulate hardware before you create it. I remember a while ago reading about a machine that essentially lets you emulate a video card processor before you physically make one. You tell this box how your processor will be constructed and it emulates the architecture, albeit at about 1 thousandth the speed of a real chip. Still, I doubt they would be employing anything like this this early in the development cycle. Sony may be playing with one over at IBM, but not PD.
The reason I doubted PD would already be working on GT5 was because I didn't think they would want to compromise their efforts by splitting into two teams. That means KY has two projects to coordinate at once, perhaps more, let's face it, he's not a man to delegate duty to anyone, he likes to control the direction himself.