EA Sports Ignite engine trailer was pre-rendered

Gosh, wasn't the big reveal trailer for EA Sport's new next-gen engine Ignite exciting? To think, that's how sports games will be on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4! Ah. Well. Not quite. As you may have guessed, that wasn't in-game footage. No, EA says, that was pre-rendered footage which did at least use in-game assets and is supposedly "in line with" how the games actually are.

16

Gosh, wasn't the big reveal trailer for EA Sport's new next-gen engine Ignite exciting? To think, that's how sports games will be on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4! Ah. Well. Not quite. As you may have guessed, that wasn't in-game footage. No, EA says, that was pre-rendered footage which did at least use in-game assets and is supposedly "in line with" how the games actually are.

"It was all pre-rendered," EA Sports executive VP Andrew Wilson told Polygon. "Listen, we're not hiding behind that fact. This was an event that we've been planning for a number of months on a new platform. And what we wanted to do was use real game assets, so they're all real game assets, straight out of our game teams, but we had to get it into a format that would be usable in this style of event."

Consider it the target EA's aiming for with the next-gen editions of FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, NBA Live 14, and UFC. Wilson claimed that it was "following where our games are going and certainly in line with what we're seeing in our games right now on console." He added that "our games right now are delivering on that, and in some cases more."

Along with better graphics, Ignite supposedly brings better AI and movement.

We'll see more of those four games at E3, so what they're actually like should soon be clearer.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 22, 2013 8:00 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, EA Sports Ignite engine trailer was pre-rendered.

    Gosh, wasn't the big reveal trailer for EA Sport's new next-gen engine Ignite exciting? To think, that's how sports games will be on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4! Ah. Well. Not quite. As you may have guessed, that wasn't in-game footage. No, EA says, that was pre-rendered footage which did at least use in-game assets and is supposedly "in line with" how the games actually are.

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 8:12 AM

      Giant Bomb said it best, compare this video with the Madden 360 announcement video (the snow one) and you probably wouldn't see much difference.

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 8:19 AM

      Didn't we hear this same bull in 2005 during the PS3 reveal, Killzone 2 was pre-rendered using in-game assets. And with Madden "next-gen" in 2005 with a similar pre-rendered reveal. So they used hi-res textures their 3D artists had already built and used them on their pre-rendered CG trailer models? I guess they think gamers are still idiots and buy into that line from 8yrs ago.

      Not sure what is going on here. Is EA Sports so unprepared for these games to hit the shelves in 6 months that they couldn't show any gameplay because it's an embarrassment? Or did Microsoft want to keep games as a minor point of this reveal thus no real gameplay footage or anyone playing a real game was shown/allowed unlike the PS4 reveal?

      This either doesn't bode well for EA Sports progress in their XboxOne/PS4 games or this doesn't bode well for MS's interest in the core gamer anymore.

      As far as the EA Sports CG trailer itself. I wasn't impressed by it at all. It will be interesting to see what their actual next-gen games look like at E3. And if Microsoft will put games more to the forefront of their E3 presentaton.

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 8:21 AM

      You'd think after the PS3 Killzone fiasco companies would have learned not to do this.

      If you're launching a console people want to see what it can really do, not some pre-rendered misrepresentation.

      I assume the Forza trailer was also pre-rendered?

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 8:26 AM

        I didn't see anything in that presentation which looked in-engine and in-game. I don't buy it at all until I see a guy with a controller in his hand and see the screen move when his thumbs move.

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 11:44 AM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          May 22, 2013 3:16 PM

          If that was all in-engine... then yeah, holy shit, that would be impressive.

          • reply
            May 22, 2013 7:57 PM

            The Forza stuff looked believable, the way the depth of field behaved like real time stuff tends to. The EA Sports, at best, looked like it needed a crazy amount of work on the simulated subsurface scattering and bloom methods because everything looked like it was made of weird elastic polymers.

            That it was rendered using assets that weren't designed for whatever they rendered it with makes more sense.

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 2:11 PM

        EA did the exact same thing with Madden for the 360. Gamers on sites like this just forgot relative to Killzone because they forgot everything about sports games in general. EA's target renders were waaaay off.

        Here's what Madden on the 360 was supposedly going to look like eventually: http://www.ign.com/articles/2005/04/21/mr-robinsons-neighborhood-18

        I can't find the actual video anymore, the ones on IGN don't play http://www.ign.com/videos/games/madden-nfl-06-xbox-360-742471

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 8:29 AM

      I dont know if it was my stream but the lighting looked really bad and flat. Kind of surprised it was prerendered.

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 8:30 AM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          May 22, 2013 8:00 PM

          I think it was a rush job, they didn't tweak surfaces and materials of the assets in the renderer, which is why everything looked like it was made of the same weird material that scatters light totally unlike any of those disparate materials should.

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 5:21 PM

        It was probably a target rendering... designed as a goal for the game to look like (but still pre-rendered).

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 5:51 PM

        Totally agree. All I could help thinking was how much the current sports games looked better.

        Sad, sad prerender.

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 8:32 AM

      I'm pretty sure every video from every presentation (including the PS4) is pre-rendered in some form or another. Most of these videos should be taken with a few lbs of salt. It's at E3 with games actually working on the consoles being played by the attendees.

      Games like the Aliens: Colonial Marines demo, The Killzone videos (PS3 and PS4), etc..etc..

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 8:45 AM

        But in the PS4 presentation, you saw a person hold a controller and actually play the game.

        • reply
          May 22, 2013 9:27 AM

          Yup, and they also got other people to play it afterwards.
          The X1 is literally just as good as an empty box right now.

        • reply
          May 22, 2013 11:36 AM

          Easily can be faked, and it wouldn't be the first time.

          • reply
            May 22, 2013 1:43 PM

            Except for the part where they let the press play it later. The last case I recall of this happening, incidentally, was the Kinect reveal event from Microsoft.

            • reply
              May 22, 2013 7:50 PM

              They've even already released presentations on the rendering tech used, which are pretty fascinating, by the way.

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 1:36 PM

      Bullshots you say? Of a Sports game? Well I never!

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 1:42 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 2:06 PM

      you could tell it wasn't entirely bullshit because Madden still had the same awkward, not quite right gait in the player movement, ugh

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 3:16 PM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 4:58 PM

        Just like with the wife, with you guys is easier to LIE

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 6:11 PM

      the best advertisement for an engine is a pre-rendered video

      • reply
        May 22, 2013 6:24 PM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          May 22, 2013 7:01 PM

          I had that discussion so many times...ugh...the DC was pretty damned good graphically speaking and I still hear from people who think that it was somehow way behind the PS2 when it was close to the PS2's graphical power if not comparable. I've even heard people claim that the GameCube wasn't up to the PS2's standards (when it was actually more powerful in a lot of ways as I remember).

          I also remember when I was in the dorm at college back around 2000 or so, someone saw me playing either Tribes 2 or Quake 3 and they freaked out about how good it looked and they were like "that looks like a Playstation 2 game or better" which I thought was amusing.

          • reply
            May 22, 2013 7:58 PM

            It was actually superior in a lot of ways. It had like twice that VRAM and efficient tile rendering GPU that kept pretty consistent fill rates back then when brute force was more limited back then. The CPU was also very efficient for developers and quite quick compares to the hard to program for multi CPU approach Sony took.

            Very efficient design.

    • reply
      May 22, 2013 7:42 PM

      When I saw this my first response was "seriously?". This isn't the 05' PS3 E3 conference. This shit doesn't fly anymore. Show some actual footage or get the fuck out. This doesn't interest anyone anymore.

Hello, Meet Lola