Late 2004/early 2005!!
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/dukenukemforever/news_6085889.html
Another year's wait, oh well [:)]
I think if its a huge flop, we'll probably see an end of huge games with equally huge development teams.
To publishers, it's just not feasible spendning millions of dollars that takes 7 years to get a return on - and theres no guarentee that it will break even.
It'll be unfortunate if thats the case, games are getting too short, I'm finding it hard to justify spending $90 on something that will keep me entertained for a mere 10 hours.
Soooo.. With some luck, DNF will be a kickass game that you play for weeks before getting close to finishing..
I would be surprised if they have it finished by then.
I used to think that the "when it's done" attitude was a good thing for games. But I realised a long time ago that a 'game' is a solution to a problem within given constraints - including time. You have to be able to predict where games are headed, and if you can't, you'll spend 7-8 years making a game that will ultimately be no better than something that took 2 years to make.
I didn't think the original half life took 5 years to make?
It was released in 1998...my memory is a bit foggy, so even if it was released at the end of 1998, then they would have had to start working on it at the start of 1994, which is about when doom 2 was finished.
Just seems chronologically out of place.
Whenever they say that they have been working on a game for 5 years, that can mean a few different things. It may not always be physically making the game. They may also take the conception stage into account.
Although that is a crucial part of any designing process, one year of concepting that they mention could just be the occasional thinking. It seams that if people think that a game has been thought about and in developement for a long time then it will mean that it will have more effort put into it.
I'm sure that HL2 was being 'made' at the samae time as HL1. Although that could merely be the thought of wanting to make a series of games. They probably didn't really start their ideas for HL2 until HL1 was finished though. They have said on numerous occassions that the fans have influenced how they wanted HL2 to be. Therefore, any work on HL2 that was done before HL1 was finished may have been fairly minimal.
Without some sort of diary, it is very difficult to know what level of work they have done during the game's cycle.
Marty - the way that question has been phrased it doesn't necessarily imply that HL2 was being developed for 5 years, just that some development for it started back then. Another thing is that the Half Life 1 SDK didn't ship the same moment that the game did, it did at least a year after...
But if you want to count it that way, HL2 development started with the Quake1 engine, which was done in 1995-6, therefore you could say that its been in development for over 8 years now!
whats another year on close to a decade....
how many times have they rebuilt this thing? didnt it start on the Unreal 1 engine?