Interview with Codemasters (6): Developing for Xbox Live

Exclusive Xbox 360 developer interview with Codemasters (6): Developing for Xbox Live

Xb360info.com: Are all of the games you have under development able to be played online using Xbox Live?

Codemasters: Certainly all our games will have Xbox Live functionality. LMA 06 will focus on the online community and downloadable data, but certainly our racing games will have online play.

Xb360info.com: Will your games have any additional content downloadable from Xbox Live?

Codemasters: LMA 06 will come complete with all the new season transfers when it hits the shelves in March 06, so there will be no additional content downloadable from Xbox Live. However, future versions of the series will use Xbox Live to give the consumer even more up-to-date transfer information and news.

Xb360info.com: What, if anything, has been the major challenge in developing games that work in conjunction with Xbox Live?

Codemasters: To start with Xbox Live is very nice to work with since it’s one set standard to design for. Microsoft has also provided much of functionality for Live in the Guide. That is a really, really good thing. We’d rather spend our time and effort on gameplay and the audio/visual experience.

Xb360info.com: Are any of your games impacted if Xbox Live users do not have a hard drive in their Xbox 360 console, such as loading times, responsiveness, or things you can do (such as map editors etc)?

Codemasters: Not at present. As new games evolve, you never know, but there are no issues we can see at the moment. Remember the memory units are much bigger which would help with such situations.

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This interview has 7 parts:

1. Games in development
2. Power of the Xbox 360
3. Technical challenges
4. Programming graphics
5. Sound for Xbox 360
6. » Developing for Xbox Live
7. Working with Microsoft