NCsoft licenses texture software used in Xbox Live Arcade games

by Samuel Axon on Jun 24th 2008 10:00PM

Allegorithmic, the creator of a procedural texture production tool called ProFX, announced that NCsoft has licensed its product. ProFX produces highly compressed textures that are "tiny, typically a few kilobytes" in size. Those textures are expanded and generated on the fly from that data by the system's processor as needed. That means file sizes are very small, but visual quality is maintained. The tech is therefore popular with companies developing games for the Xbox Live Arcade, the Xbox 360's digital download marketplace for bite-sized, casual gaming experiences.

NCsoft plans to use the technology in the future development of MMOs for PCs and the PlayStation 3 console. That choice might imply a comparatively small scope for those projects. ProFX is perfectly suited for games downloadable through the PlayStation Network store (Sony's answer to the Xbox Live Arcade), so this is another clue that NCsoft's PS3 games might be PSN releases instead of AAA Blu-ray titles.

It's by no means definitive though; NCsoft might have just been looking for a way to bring down patch sizes. So move along now!

Source

Tags: allegorithmic, development, engine, license, ncsoft, playstation-3, playstation-network, profx, ps3, psn, speculation, technology, xbox-live

Reader Comments (2)

I didn't make it to level 20 before Wow pulled me back. I'd rather work on established, loved characters with a guild full of people I really enjoy playing with than seeing boobs and being forced to run back and forth and back and forth and back and...OMG...grinding at level 15?! Ridiculous.

The less your computer has to work for visual detail the better games will look on old computers. Its why Call of Duty 4 looks just as good as Crysis on "older" machines and yet runs better, better usage of technology.

MMOs are notoriously known for being played on sub-average computers because its such a casual market compared to FPS or RTS games, so getting high quality textures on those machines would require something like this.