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Project Offset to be a Larrabee Launch Title, PC Exclusivity Nearly Certain

Exclusive – In February of this year, Intel acquired game developer Offset Software and its game engine technology with the obvious goal to deliver a game that can show off the capabilities of its upcoming discrete graphics card, code-named Larrabee. Late Friday we got our hands on new concept art, revealing some of the work that has been done over the past six months and received word that Offset will also be launching a new community to collect feedback from gamers on Monday.

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Project Offset, developed as a first person shooter based on the Offset engine, has been a little known effort until a video leaked to the web in July 2007. The visuals received praise, but the company almost disappeared from the surface of the earth when Intel announced that it had acquired the studio. No further information about Project Offset has been provided since then and as far as the game engine is concerned, we only know that it has been licensed by Red5 Studios. Project Offset was rumored to be a PC only game before the Intel acquisition and now we are certain that this in fact will be the case. Intel would not pour money into a game that may look better on a game console than on a PC.
M337ING - contributor
Published: 442 days 17 hours ago | News | Gaming | PC | Industry News | Dev News | Tech
 
 

Showing: 1 - 21 of 21 Comments
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Boldy - 442 days 18 hours ago
1 -
I just hope that by the time it releases it will be able to run on my 8800GTS graphics card.
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JsonHenry - 442 days 1 hour ago
1.1 -
Am I the only one thinking Larrabee is nothing more than a gimmick in terms of video gaming performance? DOA?
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Fishy Fingers - 442 days 17 hours ago
2 -
Not surprised, as soon as Intel signed on the dotted line this game was all but guaranteed PC exclusive.
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PirateThom - 442 days 17 hours ago
2.1 -
Don't tell the fanboys, both were convinced it was only on their consoles as well as PC.
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El_Colombiano - 442 days 16 hours ago
2.2 -
Buh, buh, but PIRACY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!1111!1!!!!!11!!!
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fermcr11 - 442 days 16 hours ago
2.3 -
@PirateThom

LOL ... you are so mean :)
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Ju - 442 days 16 hours ago
3 -
So, I am wondering. How can that work out if Intel is buying game studios on one side but want to convince console builders to use Larrabee on the other ? Isn't that an immediate thread against the console manufacturer? Or is Intel coming up with their own console, eventually ? Curious. I could imagine they might alienate a couple of people with that strategy. I could imagine, even EA might have some thoughts about that constellation (huge HW manufacturer with loads of cash buying exclusive studios...). There's something in the making, no ?
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fermcr11 - 442 days 16 hours ago
3.1 -
Intel can do what they want... they have the money and the balls to do so.
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M337ING - 442 days 16 hours ago
3.2 -
They're only courting console developers so that they could get more multi-plat games to support their hardware.

I'm sure they will make more money from selling discrete cards than giving discounted chips to MS for the next Xbox.
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Ju - 442 days 16 hours ago
3.3 -
I don't know. Selling a couple of million chips (10-100M) is quite an opportunity. And yes, I agree. Intel can do whatever they want. That's what I think might frighten some others, though. But, well, if that would mean another console at some point, I don't care. Bring it on.

Larrabee would make the most sense in a console, because it would allow them to strip out the CPU. Man, ever heard about Commodore's Hombre project. Funny how history repeats itself ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... ).
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SilentShank - 442 days 16 hours ago
4 - Hm
I hate marketing ploys like this. It's obvious the Project Offset in-house engine looked great to begin with. So whenever Intel shows off Project Offset and why their Larrabee chip is best suited for gaming, take it all in with a grain of salt.

We've seen this all before with DX10/Crysis, and most notably, Cell Factor and Ageia PhysX cards.
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The Kingslayer - 442 days 14 hours ago
5 - Yeah
I mean we have yet to see this card in action. Let alone the fact that Project Offset has been in development for so long. It almost feels like all the Halo commotion before Microsoft got exclusive. Remember all the hype of it as a new PC FPS for the ages? Perhaps this game can be that for Intel and Larrabee.

Be a gamer...Not a hater
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M337ING - 442 days 13 hours ago
5.1 -
I hope its an amazing game too. And I hope it'll bring people back to high-end PC gaming.
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m9105826 - 442 days 14 hours ago
6 -
Honestly, who didn't see this coming? Offset is an incredibly impressive engine, and the team behind it are some of the best in the field. Reading their tech documents on their website is very enlightening as a 3D artist. When I heard that Intel had bought them out, I knew they had something like this planned.
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cmrbe - 442 days 13 hours ago
7 - Wasn't this suppose
to be a x360 exclusive ?.
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M337ING - 442 days 13 hours ago
7.1 -
No. It was a PC-lead game from the start, with a 360 port announced before the developer got bought by Intel.
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cmrbe - 442 days 11 hours ago
7.2 - MS relies on others too much
They must build up their first party.
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YoshiMeetsU - 442 days 12 hours ago
8 -
That is very disappointing to hear. I've been on the forums since the site first launched and it seemed most of the support the game had on it's community forum was Xbox 360 owners. I don't PC game and certainly am not going to have a system to run this game now so that sucks.

I will probably check out the site relaunch and see what the response is but this game just went off my list.
8.1 THWIP | 442 days 10 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show
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M337ING - 442 days 5 hours ago
8.2 -
@ THWIP

Intel doesn't care how much games it sells. Project Offset is going to be a hardware seller, so that Intel can get into the graphics card market.

Offset Sotfware has unlimited funds now (nearly), I doubt they'll care about piracy as much as other devs.
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moja - 442 days 11 hours ago
9 - Intel is serious
If they get a good enough result with this we may see some Intel graphics in the next systems. However, they know they are quite the underdog right now, so expect something interesting.
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