Three Studios, One Platform: Devs talk Xbox One

"It's like landing a plane as they're building the runway, and the plane's engine is on fire, and there's holes in the fuselage, spilling out fuel," says Ryse: Son of Rome's design director PJ Estevez on the subject of debuting as a launch title for a new console.

We're sitting in a cooled basement somewhere underneath London that's been refitted to stock multiple Xbox Ones. Crowds of people mill by consoles, TVs and banners declaring which game is in which corner of the two-level space. Developers clutch coffee cups like their lives depends on it.

That's not far from the truth; most admit to jet-lag, sleep deprivation. Some have flown in only the day before and spent the night setting up their stations, testing final builds one last time. They're haggard, tired. Red Bull's become their new best friend. And we're only in the first hours of the 48 that make up the two-day event that's one of the last legs of Xbox One's promotional tour. Just one of a series of press junkets and community evenings, all punctuated by lots of travel leading up to the console launch. Sleep's somewhere on the agenda. "It feels like we've been on [the road] forever, constantly, since we announced at E3," laughs Capcom Vancouver's producer Mike Jones.

There are other games here - as one of the last events before the reviews hit, most of the Xbox One's launch titles are represented - but the space and attention is mainly given to three games, three developers: Ryse: Son of Rome, Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3. Crytek, Turn 10, Capcom Vancouver.

It's the trio and their wares that have become intrinsically tied to Xbox One, representing the face of Microsoft's next-gen plans. All three have been brought onboard early into the console's development. Ryse, as with Crimson Dragon, was originally an Xbox 360 Kinect title that was remoulded into the Rome-based action adventure. Dead Rising 3, the third party franchise that debuted on Xbox 360, is an exclusive to Xbox One. Forza Motorsport 5, the racing simulation whose developer is populating the race tracks with Cloud-sourced racer data. All the teams have been working for some time on their respective developments.

"We started three years ago," Turn 10's Dan Greenawalt says, "before we even shipped Forza 4. To me, what was critical was that we didn't compromise, but I wanted to be there at launch. I thought this would be a crazy challenge, really interesting." While the game's been hit with claims of stripped down content to make that launch date, most of the coverage up to now's been focused on the Drivatar system, that exchanges competent AI for the uncertainty of drivers whose styles are based on other Forza 5 player data mined from the Cloud.

"The Cloud has been around; we could have hooked up with the cloud on the Xbox 360," he continues. "The big difference is, it's so much easier on the Xbox One. The APIs are there, we have dedicated servers - it's so much easier to tap into Azure, because of what Microsoft has done with the actual architecture. That free ups my resources to be working on the actual features rather than hooking up the technology that made it."

In previous interviews, Dan's stated that much of what Turn 10 were trying to achieve with the next Forza title informed Microsoft's decisions on what would ultimately become the backbone of the Xbox One architecture. But if Microsoft were informed by their racing studio's ambitions, Dan's vision of the gaming future was informed, oddly, by a pregnant lady. At least, as he remembers it.

"There's an article I really liked, that in many ways spawned this whole thing," he starts. "This was years ago, an article in the US about Target [the store chain] was able to tell - I'm going to get this wrong - that a young woman was pregnant because of the things she was buying. They were able to use big data and correlation to say 'something thats buys this this and that, is eventually going to buy that that and that and therefore is pregnant'.

"It seemed unrelated, and the only way the computer - this is what big data does, it takes in a lot of information and draws correlations that our logical minds don't - sees the pattern. So when I heard that, I thought it was really interesting. Yea, it's for targeted ads etc, I'm not going to get into whether ads are right or wrong, because I don't care. What I care about is can I make this into an experience that would really change how our industry looks at AI. Because at root, that is AI - search is AI, this learning algorithm is AI. So that's really what spawned this idea about Drivatar. It would work in any other genre as well," he continues, expecting players to start questioning why the same type of AI isn't populating shooters, and any other genre for that matter.

Yet the challenge of making the launch date, along with all the innovations ("you don't usual bring your epic, huge innovation, flagship game [to launch]" laughs Dan reflectively) was a good thing in the end it seems. "In many ways it's reinvigorated my passion, my excitement for working on this franchise," Dan admits.

"For me, personally? It's bittersweet," admits Crytek design director PJ Estevez of seeing the finishing line in sight. He talks how he's proud of what his team has achieved on Ryse: Son of Rome, but he can't help but look at what the game could have been. "As a developer, I see the stuff I couldn't get to. I look at the game and see - I played it so much, your vision takes you past what you've done - I just see the stuff I couldn't get to, and that's the painful part."

We ask whether it's specific to being a launch title, or its a general one for any game release.

"I think it's a little bit of both. Any developer will tell you that it's the stuff that you don't get to that will kill you. You end up cutting things which is a natural, healthy part of the process, but it's like, when you go into a launch, it becomes even more important. So it's not just about cutting, it's about hitting the date."

Estevez states the cuts "were mostly features", with the story locked down ages ago. "For us on Ryse it's important to pick and choose our battles."

For Dead Rising 3, producer Mike Jones says one of the biggest worries was just getting the game finished. "We'd hit a wall, trying to do all this stuff," he says of all the technical improvements, such as full-streaming, and increasing the number of objects on screen at once. "Then Microsoft would solve that problem."

He fully supports the publisher for their involvement - "there's no way we would have made launch", he admits, though says that being brought in early to the Xbox One project was of great benefit. "That long lead time and support that their tech teams gave us was huge."

Issues with the Xbox One hardware were a two-way street though. "We'd get to a new problem we didn't even know existed," Mike says. "We'd say 'did you know about this?' they'd be like: 'no'.... we'd have this back and forth, sack race with them all the way to the end."

Discussion about gameplay mechanics and feedback was highlighted over the summer, as both Dead Rising 3 and Ryse were demoed on both sides of the world, with showings at E3 and Gamescom, as well as other events in-between. Both suffered negative chatter; the former for its more serious tone of the previously comedic zombie adventure, and the latter for its reliance on QTEs and on-screen prompts. Both Jones and Estevez reflect on the issues, citing consciously paced reveals, and work-in-progress builds that didn't reflect the final products.

"At E3, we planned we were going to announce our more serious tone on a more serious note, because we wanted to be known as an open world action survival zombie game," notes Jones. "We very deliberately put it out there like that, knowing full well we'd follow up at Comic Con and other successive shows with 'here's all the crazy costumes and crazy combo weapons and combo vehicles." The game's performance and frame rate also came under fire as a result of the Gamescom build.

"At that time, we were literally going content complete," he explains. "We were beginning to optimise, we were beginning to get the latest software development kits from Microsoft. And literally the week between Gamescom and PAX, then TGS a couple of weeks later, our performance went through the roof - a solid 30.... [people's reactions to the new build] was as big win for us."

The duality of older, public demo builds versus what was going on back at the studio was something Crytek were also conscious of. "When I look at E3," Estevez remembers, "we had all that stuff about the QTEs, and while we were really confident about the vision and the direction we'd set to this date, to launch - it was just a matter of us not having all those features done yet... we're still iterating through and I think we landed some place better, and it makes those decisions easier when you know that the public is backing you to not show buttons on screen."

Feedback was still an important factor, the design director says. "The actual people that had hands-on at E3 and GC and gave us their feedback: 'I like this, this and this - have you guys thought about A, B and C?' Well, we've thought about A and B, and thanks for C - we'll incorporate that into the game."

It's Ryse that'll likely feel the weight of the Xbox One launch scrutiny the most. While not getting an easy pass, the other two are somewhat safer from scrutiny as people know those franchises ("obviously brand recognition does a lot for you," says Mike Jones of Dead Rising 3), while the new IP on the block has expectations to clarify what "next-gen gaming" could potentially be.

No pressure then. Estevez is contemplative on the subject - his studio have been in these waters before.

"It's nothing that I don't think Crytek have dealt with in the past. Because even though the stage is bigger than what we've experienced before, whenever we made a Crysis game, people knew when you came to the table, he game had to be beautiful. So we knew our next-gen launch title had to be gorgeous, there's no doubt about that."

"I don't think you'd be able to go back and play another game that doesn't have facial performance," he continued "so in a way, we're really setting the bar - if you want a place at the table for next-gen, this is what you have to come with."

With the next-gen officially becoming the current-gen, you'd think the developers would be out celebrating. But all know the realities of a industry in an era of post-launch DLC, updates and tweaks - things never really end. Vacation time is fleeting.

Dan Greenawalt: "We can fix areas that we see bugs. Then we can add content lists and such. As far as my role - there's really never downtime. There's always something else we're working on."

PJ Estevez: "It's getting time to enjoy the whole launch, not just Ryse - I'm going to sit down and play Forza with my son, we're going to enjoy it. I suspect it's like a sports franchise when they finish their season; you just want to forget about it. I know some of the guys are going to South Africa, or doing all these crazy trips. Stop being game developers for a while."

Mike Jones: "We're taking a break and coming back fresh for whatever new crazy stuff we start planning, and for me - I'm on it to November 22nd and after that [snaps his fingers] I'm off the grid. I'm going to pass out, eat some Thanksgiving turkey, get really drunk, and then come back fresh and figure out what we do next. "

You can read all our Xbox One launch day reviews here.