"Activision demonstrated an early level in the game; you have to fight your way to the base's Alpha Labs in order to get a warning signal to a nearby fleet of warships. From the get-go, the graphical immersion is superb. Doom 3 is, without a doubt, one of the best-looking console games we've seen. There are a lot of curved surfaces and bump-mapping to give the base's interior a very realistic and amazing look, but at the heart of the graphic's engine is the powerful lighting and shadowing system. As we watched, the marine entered a large room, when the lights sudden went out. In the pitch dark, the only way to detect attacking zombies is by sound, and perhaps by catching the silhouette of one against a distant light. But the tension and creepiness are definitely there. "

"Hell Never Looked So Good. Instantly, it is easy to see that Doom 3 on the Xbox is quite possibly the best looking and most detailed graphical display to date with meticulous texturing, bump mapping and above all very dramatic lighting. While a top of the line PC graphics card may be capable of producing outstanding graphics, the Xbox displayed quite impressive results that wowed even the most devout PC fans at the event. The visual aesthetics of Doom 3 on the Xbox play a key role along with the gameplay and audio to create one of the most horrifying and truly frightening gaming environments your living room has ever seen. High definition enabled televisions will be capable of displaying the game in 480p mode for even more sharp and crisp graphics. The Xbox version of Doom 3 is also running at a fluid 30 frames per second that hold up soundly throughout the game. Together, Activision, id Software and Vicarious Visions set out to create Doom 3 as THE game that will, “make your living room the scariest room in the house,” and from early on in the game it appears as though they will do just that."

"The Xbox version of the game will feature exclusive cooperative gameplay for up to two players via Xbox Live or System Link. Outside of the co-op mode there will also be some standard modes like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Last Man Standing. These modes will top off at a maximum of four players, which is a big disappointing, but not surprising considering the stunning visuals in the game. In all, there will be five multiplayer maps and the game will also support voice chat. For tech junkies, the game will also support Dolby Digital 6-channel surround sound, as well as 480p."

"The hard part for fans is going to be looking past expectations of what a DOOM game should be and embracing what DOOM 3 is -- a gritty take on the horrors of a demon infestation at a military base on Mars. There will be shooting aplenty, don't worry, and in the 10-minute demo there was quite a good deal of it, but none of it is at, say, the pace of Halo. Atmosphere is clearly being emphasized with heavy use of shadow and minimal lighting, plus six-channel Surround Sound with random ethereal voices crying for help and cackling voices from the shadows. It's creepy, it's moody, but when the action hits, DOOM 3 quickly kicks into high gear, slowing once more once all the corpses have dissipated."

[edit 2nd April @ 00:35] This press release is totally bogus, everything contained in it is pure nonsense. LOL @ all those who fell for it, yes there were lots of you!

ELECTRONIC ARTS ANNOUNCE ACQUISITION OF DOOM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 1, 2004 -- Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS), the world's leading interactive entertainment software company today announced the completion of negotiations with id Software, ending month long talks over the acquisition of the multi-million dollar DOOM® brand and all associated technologies.

First released in 1993, Doom is widely recognized as the catalyst for the first-person action genre. Since its inception, the franchise has been one of the industry’s best-selling PC series.

"We couldn't be happier" said Mark Kelly, EA Senior Vice President and General Manager. "This is a very important move for us, Doom® 3 is one of the most anticipated releases of the year on any format - its acquisition will allow us to penetrate into more traditional areas of the PC entertainment market".

This agreement reinforces EA's commitment to bring quality interactive entertainment to the broadest possible audience "it will now be possible for us to re-write and scale back the existing technology to better suit a more general audience, allowing it to run on the greatest number of platforms" said John Spinner, President and Chief Operating Officer at Electronic Arts "we will now release on Playstation®2, with ports on PC, Xbox® and Gamecube™ to follow shortly thereafter".

About Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, Electronic Arts posted revenues of $2.5 billion for fiscal 2003. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under three brand names: EA SPORTS™, EA GAMES™, and EA SPORTS BIG™. EA's homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA's products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.

About id Software
id - Freud's primal part of the human psyche and one of the hottest game shops on Earth - has been rocking the gaming world from Mesquite, Texas since 1991. As a renowned leader in the industry, id Software forged such frenetic titles as Wolfenstein 3D®, DOOM®, DOOM II™, QUAKE® and QUAKE II™. With intense graphics and mind-blowing action, id's games have helped redefine the modern video game, continually setting industry standards for technology and gameplay. And, in keeping with tradition, id Software has amplified the world of adrenaline pumping 3-D gaming with the release of their latest action titles, Return to Castle Wolfenstein™, QUAKE III Arena™ and QUAKE III: Team Arena™.

Electronic Arts, EA GAMES, EA SPORTS, and EA SPORTS BIG are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. DOOM is a registered trademark of id Software ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PlayStation is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Nintendo GameCube is a trademark of Nintendo of America, Inc. Xbox is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

"John Carmack made some really good decisions in architecting the engine for scalability. We knew that PS2 and Gamecube were out of the question due to particular graphics requirements (global illumination, normal mapping, shadow volumes etc.), but we knew Xbox had a shot. The key concerns were memory and performance. With only 64MB RAM on the Xbox and a 733Mhz processor, we knew it would be quite challenging –- but not impossible. The team here was really excited to be working on this project -– a chance to work on Doom! -– so we were definitely going to take it on and prove that a great Xbox version could be made. Now, after many months of development, I think it’s safe to say that players will be stunned when they see the type of graphics fidelity that Doom 3 is able to present on the Xbox."

"A video card with at least 128MB RAM and Pixel Shader 1.1 support is required for DOOM 3.
A 2.5GHz CPU should be enough for the stencil shadows and physics calculations.
The testing phase might last till summer or even later this year.
DOOM 3 will be released on 4 CDs."

quote:

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Willits opens his in-game PDA for the next mission objective. The PDA contains maps, goals, e-mails retrieved from bodies, and so on. It's a cool little window into the world, but if you read some information carefully, you'll find hints to secret areas, inside jokes, and other minutia. For example, at one point you read an email that you've downloaded to your PDA from a supervisor. In it, you're asked to fix the loose floor panels in the Alpha Labs before someone falls through and is injured. If you read the e-mail, you'll know where to find the broken floor panels, which lead to a secret underground passage. You can then sneak up behind a number of demons and zombies and kill them before they can ambush you.

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"According to Hollenshead, a revised script doing the rounds is looking good, and Warner Brothers is fast tracking the movie with John Wells and Lorenzo Bonaventura working to put it together. Indeed, WB has to fast track the movie, because the Id/WB deal is a cleverly structured "progress-to-completion" deal, which offers no money up front but gives WB strict deadlines to deliver a script, green light the movie, start filming, etc, or else the rights revert back to Id Software. "Our deal is actually putting time pressure on Warner Brothers to not sit and wait on the movie," Hollenshead told CGW."

One of the really significant new technical features in Doom 3 is the per polygon hit detection, which does away with the invisible hitboxes of old in favour of accurate collision detection for every projectile. "This feature had a lot more an impact than we were expecting," admits id CEO Todd Hollenshead. "We've had per poly detection in single-player for a year, but we never realised the full impact of it, of the player no longer being, effectively, a big rectangular cube. A bullet can now go under someone's arm or between their legs, or just whiz by their head. It definitely puts a premium on aiming. The first thing we realised was like: 'Damn, people are hard to kill in Doom 3 multiplayer. Why is that?' And we looked at the damage values, the hitpoints, the armour, but eventually we realised - we're just missing. We're lousy shots."