DoA4 to launch with 360

By Ellie Gibson Published 21 July, 2005

In Japan, at the very least.

Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki has confirmed the developer's commitment to finishing Dead or Alive 4 in time for the Xbox 360's Japanese launch, but there's still no word on when we can expect to see the game in Europe.

Speaking to Famitsu magazine, Itagaki also said that DoA4 will feature more than 20 fighters and will centre around a character called Helena, an opera singer who runs the evil DOATEC organisation. There are eight new characters designed by Itagaki himself.

Naturally there will be plenty of old friends to say hello to, but don't expect to walk straight in and start pulling off the same old tricks - "The fighting styles of the characters won't change without changing around their main moves," Itagaki told Famitsu.

"It's a real risk. This isn't something that's a small adjustment to the game's balance.

"Up until now, we were chained to the series' existing framework. But time had passed, and by the period that we were working on Beach Volleyball, we felt that [the framework] didn't matter any more," he explained.

"We will be [trying to create] a game that plays more like a Dead or Alive game than a game that plays like a fighing game." Hmm.

Itagaki also said that DoA4 will use a new 'slow shutter' engine that deliberately blurs the look of the action on screen for extra realism when characters are fighting at high speed.

"This kind of effect isn't possible with current consoles," he said.

"By blurring the characters, we can express movements that can't be shown at a frame rate of 60 frames per second." There are also plans to include a camera mode so you can take snapshots with the blur effect in place.

DoA4 is due out in Europe... Eventually.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tenma #1 7 years ago

    #1 :D

  • sephy #2 7 years ago

    'slow shutter' sounds like an excuse to boost framerates for complex movement rather then a visual effect

    Anyone surprised? no me neither

    /inserts mist and clouds to hide pop up

  • pantherboy #3 7 years ago

    The DOA series has always been quality, looking forward to this.

  • smelly #4 7 years ago

    "'slow shutter' sounds like an excuse to boost framerates for complex movement rather"

    ??

  • kangarootoo #5 7 years ago

    I second the ??.

  • Pirotic #6 7 years ago

    the shutter idea is good, it basically means anything moving to fast for the eye to track will create a trial. like when you try to take a photograph of a car moving really fast etc. should look good in high-def.

  • mattigan #7 7 years ago

    I wonder if they'll blur the boobies

  • smelly #8 7 years ago

    "I wonder if they'll blur the boobies "

    If they're moving fast enough, i dont see why not.

  • space_ace #9 7 years ago

    er... 360 in japan? more likely u.s. premiere

  • drumbaby #10 7 years ago

    DOA4 seems like something to usher out the old gen', rather than a game to usher in the new.

  • Beano #11 7 years ago

    DOA... yawn

  • The-Bodybuilder #12 7 years ago

    >"i hope the DOA4 dumps the whole keepy upy combo system and adopts a more tekken style."

    Ahem. You mean Virtua Fighter style. ;-)

  • captain-future #13 7 years ago

    first really good reason to own x360 this christmas.

  • admir #14 7 years ago

    man i want the ps3 and nitendo revo...
    the xbox360 not really becouse i know the most of their games will come to PC really there is no resone to buy it and now sony bought the Unreal 3 eng.. games will look good lets hope they will play good too

  • sephy #15 7 years ago

    /wonders why people have trouble understanding implication of my previous post

    Itagaki also said that DoA4 will use a new 'slow shutter' engine that deliberately blurs the look of the action on screen for extra realism when characters are fighting at high speed.
    "By blurring the characters, we can express movements that can't be shown at a frame rate of 60 frames per second."
    by blurring the screen, they can save on processing power and instead use it for other areas, such as improved detail on specific animation sequences (because for example they wont need to render the background at full detail) leading to increase framerates through a graphical trick.

    IE. it could just as much be a technical reason as it is a graphical one.

    Clouds and mist were in reference to other games using graphical tricks to hide their tecnical flaws. For example magic carpet used lots of fog to make better use of the inferior hardware back in the day. other ganes do this to hide pop-up.

    and how does this make me a fanboy????

  • tengu #16 7 years ago

    If you say anything bad about anything to do with Xbox, you're obviously a Sony/Nintendo fanboy, because of course, the Xbox can do no wrong... except when it comes to... anything really.
    Edited by tengu at 22/07/05 @ 08:56

  • Milbe #17 7 years ago

    I assume these "slow shutter" effect will only step in, when a charater performs a high-speed move, and not all the time. So if the game engine is already calculating x amount of polygons/textures etc. during gameplay, an effect that lasts for a few seconds, is definiately not there to save any processing power...

  • Xerx3s #18 7 years ago

    Helena = Ace n00b basher :D

    "that deliberately blurs the look of the action" - Hmmz, isnt that applied with doa2&3? When you bash someone/get bashed into (scratch what you prefer) a wall with electricity?

    " 'slow shutter' sounds like an excuse to boost framerates for complex movement rather then a visual effect" - Could be, but somehow i doubt it. Doa is a fighting game, and fighting games can look ace without using to much system power because the lvls are far smaller than other genres. And somehow i doubt that a platform that can run huge hd lvls from engines such as U3 with ease will have problems with an engine such as D4. I could be wrong of course. Speculation :)

    "I wonder if they'll blur the boobies "

    /imagines watching helena fight with blur blocks over her boobies.

    /wanders of to play doa 2u

    " man i want the ps3 and nitendo revo...
    the xbox360 not really becouse i know the most of their games will come to PC really there is no resone to buy it and now sony bought the Unreal 3 eng.. games will look good lets hope they will play good too"

    "If you say anything bad about anything to do with Xbox, you're obviously a Sony/Nintendo fanboy, because of course, the Xbox can do no wrong... except when it comes to... anything really."

    Seriously ppl, whats the point in posting such comments on a topic about doa4? Other than proving your uber fanboyism of course. If it doesnt have anything to do with the topic, dont post it there.

    Sephy, you just point out technical things that could be. That doesnt make you a fanboy. It just means that the person who calls you that is incapable of thinking about it and formating hiw thoughts into text, hence resorting to simple stuff.

  • Teeth #19 7 years ago

    It sounds to me like what they're talking about is real motion blurring, of the type seen in renders. This effect has been in use since the 8-bit days when people would add a white 'swish' to a sprite to give the impression of movement where that movement was too fast to express in individual sprites. They are now using the power of the 360 to (presumably) render several frames at sub-60-frame intervals and blend them together to produce a motion blurred effect that differs from the time-honoured system of taking the last few frames and alpha-blending them onto the current frame.

    edit - so that would in fact take much more processing rather than less.
    Edited by Teeth at 22/07/05 @ 10:51

  • Wash #20 7 years ago

    DOA games have always been pretty if nothing else.

  • Mashum #21 7 years ago

    There's a nice motion blur in Trackmania Sunrise that looks something like what Teeth described - it looks fantastic and I think adds quite a bit to the visual information that your brain picks up making it easier to judge distance and speed. When forced 'on' in TM's config it does slow the framerate a bit.

    GTA3 had a sort of blur but that just involved leaving the previous frame (or two) superimposed over the next one and it looked horrible.
    Edited by Mashum at 22/07/05 @ 13:44

  • Zuiyo #22 7 years ago

    And what about the nude patch?

  • admir #23 7 years ago

    Xerx3s i aint no fanboy first of all
    i have a xbox too but i only played it once i made a mistake buying it because the PC, PS2 and Cube had better games and dude i know that for a fact and i play only like 10 houres a week name 20 games only on xbox that are good

  • IronGiant #24 7 years ago

    Yawn.. come on SEGA.

  • cm018b2391 #25 7 years ago

    doa is a great series. if they are bringing in new ideas - great! so long as the gameplay is still as fast n furious as the past games. hope they sort lag out on live this time - doau is unplayable live because of it (and UK slow upload speeds)