id: Rage Not Cut Because of Xbox 360 Limits

57
The limitations of the DVD medium and Xbox 360 hardware have not forced id to cut content from all versions of Rage (PC, PS3, 360), the studio has told Shacknews.

Following a report that id had removed "significant content" from all versions of the shooter so the game would fit onto two Xbox 360 DVDs, id Software's Tim Willits denied that the Xbox 360 version required the studio to sacrifice its vision for the game.

"There was NO CONTENT removed from RAGE because of the 360--NONE AT ALL," wrote Willits. "We feel the 360 is a great platform and will provide a fantastic Rage experience."

id has previously stated that the Xbox 360 version of Rage will look worse than its PC and PS3 counterparts due to the limitations of the DVD medium. The studio had hoped to circumvent this by spreading the 360 release across three DVDs, though Microsoft's royalty rates apparently make anything beyond two discs financially impracticable.

Willits' unedited response follows:

During my talk today I mentioned that we originally wanted to have around 5 or 6 smaller wasteland environments but later decided instead to have 2 larger wastelands. Mostly because we were going to be shipping on two DVDs for the 360 and felt that it would play better with one large wasteland on each disc so there would be no loading between wastelands. Not loading levels while you drive around is a much better decision regardless of platform.

There was NO CONTENT removed from RAGE because of the 360--NONE AT ALL. Moving from multiple wastelands into fewer but larger wastelands was a far better decision and is actually giving us more gameplay in the game.

We feel the 360 is a great platform and will provide a fantastic Rage experience.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    September 16, 2008 8:46 PM

    Okay, that makes a bit more sense. But didn't they say before that they were already targeting for two discs since there was the royalty issue for 3 discs or above on 360?

    • reply
      September 16, 2008 8:54 PM

      I found the article: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53976

      They're just reducing the resolution on the lesser-traveled parts of the wasteland to get the asset size down so the X360 version can fit on 2 discs.

    • reply
      September 16, 2008 9:02 PM

      The wasteland was originally 5 areas. It could have been split across 3 disks as 2,2,1 or 2 disks as 2,3.

Hello, Meet Lola