Project Offset canned

PC News | The tech demo remains just that.

Unfortunate news today for fans following the interesting looking Project Offset, with website Big Download confirming that Intel have shut down development of the title.

Project Offset began early development way back in 2005, at the hands of the development studio Offset Software. After releasing a rather impressive looking tech demo, Intel took interest and purchased the studio in 2008, presumably to develop Project Offset not only as a game, but also a technological demo for Intel's (at the time) future hardware, such as their integrated graphics chips.

While Offset Software might now be dead, Intel did note that a portion of Project Offset's staff, including Offset Software founder Sam McGrath, have left Intel to form a new studio called Fractiv LLC, though it is unknown as to whether or not the Project Offset title and project has joined them.

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9 Comments

Lord Haart

1 year ago

Worst news of the year hands down.

Frozencry

1 year ago

^What he said.

Huge disappointment. The tech demo's shown were really something else.

mikezilla2

1 year ago

how do you like that buy us out and then send us to the ground and fire us .... nits not the first time this has happened but it sucks when it dos.

grim-one

1 year ago

I wonder if this is related to Intel announcing the Larrabee architecture is not coming to consumers any time soon, just high end graphics processing.

Jarrod

1 year ago

grim-one wrote

I wonder if this is related to Intel announcing the Larrabee architecture is not coming to consumers any time soon, just high end graphics processing.

Guaranteed, I bet. Intel probably wanted Project Offset as a way to demo their Larrabee GPGPU, and now that it's dead there's not much point having a videogame around.

grim-one

1 year ago

Jarrod wrote

Guaranteed, I bet. Intel probably wanted Project Offset as a way to demo their Larrabee GPGPU, and now that it's dead there's not much point having a videogame around.

Well it's not dead... just not coming to the consumer market. And you're right I don't think a video game would really sell to the high performance computing market well =)

I wonder how that Havok physics engine Intel also bought was affected. I think they still OEM the technology to other game developers?

Phreakuency

1 year ago

No surprise here.

Any decent developer could make something look amazing in demo form with a couple things going on in a small area.

Yeah it looked amazing but most people always doubted it would ever become a game.

sortius_nod

1 year ago

Jarrod wrote

Guaranteed, I bet. Intel probably wanted Project Offset as a way to demo their Larrabee GPGPU, and now that it's dead there's not much point having a videogame around.

I don't think you understand what GPGPU means if you think a 3D game is to "demo" it. You might want to read up on what GPGPU is, and what Intel's stance on it is.

While this project has been canned, very sad indeed on Intel's part, the assets will no doubt become part of something else that Intel doesn't have to invest in. Some of the videos gave me hope we might be have some really nice looking games without needing a supercomputer to play them.

Jarrod

1 year ago

sortius_nod wrote

I don't think you understand what GPGPU means if you think a 3D game is to "demo" it. You might want to read up on what GPGPU is, and what Intel's stance on it is.

Larrabee was originally intended to be a mass market product, and something with heavy physics and non-graphics related processing requirements such as what we've seen so far of Project Offset would have been a sensible way to 'demo' mass market software on mass market hardware.

As it stands, Larrabee is not going to be mass market. Project Offset was cancelled due to "recent changes in our product roadmap", quote/unquote Intel.

I could be wrong, but that's how I feel.

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