Time to Wwise up

So I guess the old saying is true - there definitely is NOT anything new under the sun.

Over the past week I have discovered that there are already many middle-ware programs that aid in creating adaptive music for the sole use in computer games. Surprisingly this can be traced back as far as the early 90's with LucasArts' in house engine iMuse. Although strictly Midi based in its infancy, iMuse enabled the audio designers at LucasArts to create incredibly complicated music structures with intricate transitions linking them. See here for interviews and details on iMuse.

Returning to the here and now, there is a new audio programming API offering a similar service as FMOD that was released in 2006. This API, known as Wwise, has one of the most in depth middle ware tools for video game music creation I have seen so far. With enough time and resources you could certainly create music that is dynamic enough to conform to what was described in the previous post. However, is the amount of time required to do this too much? Is this why games still have those cringworthy audio disasters? Not enough time?

Perhaps these tools still have a little way to go before developers will be able to get the most out of them in a constrained time frame.