No split-screen option in Doom III Xbox
Exclusive: More details on Vicarious Visions' Xbox version of the game, including the latest release info and observations on how it runs compared to its PC counterpart.
Following yesterday's revelation that Doom III would be playable co-operatively over Xbox Live, our sources at Activision's Californian press event have confirmed that there will be no split-screen options in Vicarious Visions' forthcoming Xbox adaptation, and shed some light on other aspects of the presentation.
During a demonstration of the game by Id Software's Todd Hollenshead, it became apparent that while Xbox Live online options are certainly on the cards (both two-player co-operative and four-player deathmatch, in fact), split-screen offline modes are not, although graphically the game is "very, very faithful to the PC version" with no slowdown evident.
That said, nobody was actually allowed to play the game first hand, and there was no mention at all of any potential release date. Vicarious Visions CEO Karthik Bala has previously stated that development of the PC and Xbox versions of game is going on simultaneously at Id and Vicarious respectively, so we'd expect the pair to launch fairly close to one another.
At the recent Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Id Software's John Carmack said Doom III was "really close" to shipping, although the developer has always said the game will only appear when it's ready. We hope to see more of the Xbox version of the game (and the PC version, absent from the Californian Activision event) at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles next month.