READ IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://cube.ign.com/news/29465.htmSome highlights:
IGNcube: Your GameCube Star Wars Rogue Squadron "technology demo" --How long did it take to put the demo together and how tough was it to get everything to run on the system?
Julian: Well we had done a lot of theoretical work. There has been this magical number of 19 days floating around, but that\'s not totally true. On the real hardware, yes it was only 19 days, but we had been working with the prototype development kits that just simulated the system for almost half a year at that point. We tried to really stick to everything so that when the real development kit came around everything only took a couple of days to get up and running on it.
IGNcube: What effects did you not have implemented in the demo that the GameCube could easily do?
Julian: Tons. Tons. I mean, in the demo you don\'t see any bump-mapping, for example. GameCube and Xbox could do all of these effects and a lot more. The demo is really base level. Of course all of the lasers you see are real-time lights, but the surface of the Death Star is just lit by one directional light and that\'s about it. Real games for the system will look a lot better.
IGNcube: What advantages does GameCube have over Xbox and vice-versa?
Julian: Well, with Xbox, quite realistically there still isn\'t any final hardware so it\'s kind of an unfair comparison. But let\'s say most of it pans out as Microsoft says it will. At that point GameCube has more texturing abilities plus most probably a higher fill-rate and Xbox has the hard drive on the other hand. Quite frankly, when it really comes to the looks of games, our prediction is that if Microsoft delivers what it promises, you almost won\'t be able to tell the difference between the two machines.
IGNcube: What about GameCube and Xbox versus PS2?
Julian: They will look significantly better. Things like bump-mapping and several texture stages, which you can do, make both Xbox and GameCube extremely strong versus PS2. Because with PS2 you always have to use multi-pass rendering and that is a big problem. It has a very basic graphics chip. The system can pump out enormous amounts of polygons if fed right by the Vector Units, but on the other hand can do that too. PS2 has a very high fill-rate, which GameCube also has and Xbox hopefully will have. But it doesn\'t have the multi-texturing or texture compression and that\'s going to make a big difference.
GameCube and Xbox will also look very similar because they both have the same texture compression on chip -- they both use S3TC.
IGNcube: What\'s the biggest misconception about GameCube that you\'d like to clear up?
Julian: Well, first of all that there aren\'t any development kits because by now, magically enough, there are plenty of development kits.
Secondly, I really hope that it\'s not going to turn into a kid\'s machine. But rather that, in fact, it\'s going to bring back Nintendo into the mainstream, but that\'s really in Nintendo\'s hands. I\'ve read EA\'s statements, of course, that they are thinking that Nintendo will survive and probably prosper. The question is will they prosper as a company catering to all ages or as one capitalizing on a niche, and I really don\'t hope that the second one happens.
