Rage Held Back By Xbox 360's Limits

During his Austin Game Developers Conference discussion on storytelling and technology, id Software lead designer Tim Willits the developer is cutting back on the amount of content they would have liked to include in their upcoming shooter Rage. The main reason for limiting the game's content is the Xbox 360's limited disc storage, which allows about six to eight GB of data.

"The PC is limitless in the amount of data you can put on it," said Willits. "The PS3 has about 25GB. But the Xbox 360 roughly has 6 to 8 GB of data. We're hoping we can squeeze the game down to two discs for the 360 version."

According to Willits, the game was supposed to feature several wastelands for the player to explore. Because of the limitations of the Xbox 360's media, they had to cut down the wastelands to only two, which are themselves split into multiple instances. These changes have been made across all versions of Rage, not just the 360 port.

"I wouldn't say the overall story was changed in any way in order to fit on the Xbox 360 version," Willits said, "but how the player experiences Rage's story has been altered." Unfortunately, that means the experience has been altered across all platforms. This is one of the first signs we've received of the 360's older DVD media showing its age, but we expect some fans won't be terribly pleased that it's affecting other versions of the game as well.

Update: Willits released a statement to clarify his earlier statements. While he did admit that instead of having five or six wasteland environments as originally planned Rage will now only have two because of the Xbox 360's DVD limitations (one wasteland for each Xbox 360 disc), these two wastelands will now encompass all the content from the five or six that were originally planned. So no content has technically been "removed" from the game -- but the Xbox 360's storage limitations did cause id to rethink Rage's entire story and structure.

suzzopher wrote:Stop trolling Sarge

consolegaming wrote:
Hilarious I say, why don't they just give the ps3 the additional stuff,

these two wastelands will now encompass all the content from the five or six that were originally planned. So no content has technically been "removed" from the game

Rik wrote:

consolegaming wrote:
Hilarious I say, why don't they just give the ps3 the additional stuff,

these two wastelands will now encompass all the content from the five or six that were originally planned. So no content has technically been "removed" from the game

Peter Crisp wrote:I don't think you are being serious suzzopher but this article is not trolling.

Of course I'm not serious

FirstSecond wrote:Can someone explain how the PC has limitless storage? if the game is shipping on disc on the PC then surely that also is going to be DVD? is it to do with the cost of releasing multiple discs on consoles or something? If so then I just answered my own question.

FirstSecond wrote:Can someone explain how the PC has limitless storage? if the game is shipping on disc on the PC then surely that also is going to be DVD? is it to do with the cost of releasing multiple discs on consoles or something? If so then I just answered my own question.

id: Rage Not Cut Because of Xbox 360 Limits
by Nick Breckon Sep 16, 2008 10:40pm CST tags: Rage
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.

Tim Willits wrote:...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.