Xboxist

Ready at Dawn Building Xbox 360 Middleware

PSP superstars Ready at Dawn know how to create a fantastic game. After all, their two releases on the PSP stand as premier examples of what can be achieved on Sony's diminutive platform. Daxter was an action-platformer with graphics on the level of the best PS2 adventures. It also featured competent level design, smooth controls and a level of polish never seen before in a PSP title. Last year's God of War: Chains of Olympus breathed new life into the flagging PSP game library. Taking the classic PS2 titles as a starting point, Ready at Dawn once again blew us all away with a game that was so fun to play, it was easy to forget what platform it was on. It is still one of the best-looking PSP games around, making us wonder how the devs squeezed so much from the hardware.

Now, the developers say they are working on a middleware platform that will allow other studios to accomplish the same level of quality on console platforms. This suite of coding tools will allow licensees to quickly and efficiently craft games for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PSP machines. Predictably, this will make it easier for companies to create multiplatform releases of consistent quality, even on the PSP handheld. Multiplatform quality has been one of the persistent problems of the current hardware cycle, particularly on Sony's PS3.

"At Ready At Dawn Studios, we are faced with the challenges of making a great game every day," said company president Didier Malenfant. "We are building something for developers who are tired of the challenges of PC engines shoe-horned into consoles, or trying to stitch together layers upon layers of middleware from multiple vendors. Our solution will be a complete game development platform that simply works."

The development software is called the 'Ready at Dawn Engine', and will be made available to studios later in 2010.

Daxter was a console-quality game on a handheld-sized platform.