Alan Wake is being developed by Remedy who did Max Payne and Max Payne 2. It's third person view like Max Payne and given the technology, it needs a multiple core CPU. In the live video demonstration (link below) the game is running on a PC using an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU and it uses a whole cpu core just for physics simulation alone. The video basically shows off the seamless and dymanic gameworld and some physics effects.