Doom III Xbox explodes – Multiplayer Support and more Revealed Inside

id Software’s favourite console jockeys Vicarious Visions made some interesting revelations about the future of the Xbox version of Doom III, the dizzyingly impressive FPS underway for the Microsoft home machine since early 2003.

First up, recent talk of cross-platform play was kiboshed by VV CEO Karthik Bala in an interview with GamePro. He stated that although the team was aware that other id Software games such as the highly popular Quake 3 had managed to bridge this gap, there are currently no plans for Doom III to follow suit.

Bala went on to uncover some good news, namely an interesting co-operative mode that will see two players take on the game as partners. It was not disclosed as to whether this will be enabled over Xbox Live. However, it does seem likely, as a significant element of the Xbox version will comprise online multiplayer action. Until now, id has been rather coy regarding Doom III PC’s finalised multiplayer spec, with only a four-player demo being seen to date. It is expected that the finished game will have support for eight players on both platforms.

As for the co-operative element in the game, it seems strange that this has been green-lighted for the Xbox port and will be missing from the flagship PC offering, due out this May. As it’s highly likely that the Doom community will do more than a little moaning about this, perhaps a post-release patch or add-on will be issued, possibly developed by Splash Damage, the team currently charged with various multiplayer map design tasks for Doom III.