Quake Wars Multiplayer: Console vs. PC

Nestled within our extensive coverage of Splash Damage's forthcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, executive producer Kevin Cloud reveals exactly why the upcoming console editions only support 16 players at a given time, compared to the 24 players of the PC version. He explained that the bandwidth concerns with the peer-to-peer model popular in online console gaming and the prohibitive cost of dedicated servers raised latency issues for anything beyond 16 players. "Gameplay is still fun in eight versus eight," Cloud assured us, "because of the focused objectives." He also cited the impact of tying assets to individuals and classes instead of making weapons and abilities available to the entire the team as a factor that sets Enemy Territory: Quake Wars apart from other console offerings. Thus far, Microsoft's Xbox Live has made heavier use of the peer-to-peer model for hosting online matches. This approach has drawn complaints from the gaming community, most recently from players of Epic's Gears of War, who complain that the hosting player has an unfair advantage with certain weapons. That said, Xbox Live does in fact support dedicated servers, as seen in Ubisoft Montreal's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas. Meanwhile, PlayStation 3 games such as Insomniac's Resistance: Fall of Man employ dedicated servers to deliver a higher player count with less latency issues compared to Xbox Live. Furthermore, some upcoming games--for example, Incognito Entertainment's Warhawk--will allow users to host their own dedicated servers. On the topic of release dates, Cloud would only reveal that a simultaneous release of the PC and console editions is not planned at this time. The PC iteration is slated to ship "when it's done" sometime this year, with the other versions to follow.