Capcom to Bring Lost Planet to PC (Updated)

April 13, 2007 5:35 PM

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Capcom's previously Xbox 360-exclusive third person sci-fi action shooter, is in development for PC, the publisher announced at a San Francisco press event last night. Having taken flak for the SourceNext-developed, Ubisoft-published PC ports of Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, perceived by some to be inferior to their console originals, Capcom stated that it is handling the PC version of Lost Planet entirely in-house, with assistance from NVidia. During last night's event, the company cited the success of the game on Xbox 360 and "the resurgence of the PC market" as factors in the decision to put Lost Planet on PC. Last month, Capcom announced that its anticipated action game Devil May Cry 4 is also in development for PC as well as Xbox 360, in addition to the previously announced PlayStation 3 version. Both Lost Planet and Devil May Cry 4 are based on Capcom's newly developed in-house multiplatform engine. The company was clear in its intent to continually increase its focus on multiplatform development.

Numerous enhancements are being made to the game to improve upon the already highly lauded graphical fidelity of the Xbox 360 version. Lost Planet on PC will feature DirectX 10 support (neither DirectX 10 nor Windows Vista is required), resolutions of up to 2560x1600, higher-res textures, and more detailed shader and particle effects. Capcom was sure to point out that, in the PC version, bullet holes and impact points caused by objects hitting the snow are now rendered in the game's geometry rather than with flat normal-mapped textures, leading to a greater sense of depth.

Lost Planet's PC incarnation will feature online multiplayer and downloadable content, though Capcom refrained from going into further detail on these points at this time.

Shacknews was able to get hands on time with Lost Planet last night. By default, the game uses a standard WASD-style control scheme with mouselook, which translates over well from the dual analog stick configuration of the Xbox 360 controller. The game also includes built-in support for the Xbox 360 controller, and features fully mappable keyboard and mouse controls. Last night, the game was being demonstrated on a machine equipped with a quad-core PC and an NVidia 8800GTX video card; there did not seem to be any major performance issues.

Capcom expects to ship Lost Planet for PC this June.

Update: Capcom has released a number of PC version screenshots and pieces of artwork (the thumbnail to the left now links to screenshots from the PC version). Also available are comparison shots showing various graphical improvements made to the PC version of the game:
- Ambient occlusion comparison #1: Xbox 360 vs. PC
- Ambient occlusion comparison #2: Xbox 360 vs. PC
- Ambient occlusion comparison #3: Xbox 360 vs. PC
- Decal bullet holes vs. geometric bullet holes: Xbox 360 vs. PC
- Resolution comparison: Xbox 360 vs. PC
- Shadows comparison: Xbox 360 vs. PC