Why Consoles Rule the Earth (v. long)

[KDR_11k]

Last I checked God of War got several Game of the Year awards, calling the game a laughable offering looks like a serious case of bias to me.

Console ports don't suck because consoles are bad but because they fail to adapt to the different interface on the PC and sometimes the hardware as well (think Halo PC).

[Gota]

Kinda funny to me that people bring up spring.
Spring community is extremly low!!nobody knows about it.

[Keithus]

I say we all return to the perfection that was "Ultima Online".

[SwiftSpear]

Last I checked God of War got several Game of the Year awards, calling the game a laughable offering looks like a serious case of bias to me.

Oh, it was a great console game. But it pales in comparison to even an average PC game. It's only single player, it's not difficult, there's really no room for a competitive environment, it wouldn't be all that worthwhile to mod, it's not huge, procedural, or epic. A game like God of War hits the nail on the head for what consoles are about. It's a fun, laid back, single player ministory. I know I personally don't really ever look for more in a console game. However, I expect a PC game to engage me alot more than that. Not necessarily that more will happen in a PC game in a given period of time, but there will be more dynamic to the gameplay.

Hell, I don't think I'd even want to play a game like mario or final fantasy on the PC at all, but I love them on the console.

[reivanen]

Believe it or not, but cryengine2 will change the gaming world on pc... When you buy crysis you dont only get a good game in the deal, you get the license for the engine, so you can play all the massive amount of custom levels and missions thats available for download. Then, you can make your own stuff with it. And play online all the custom MOD content only if you have the legitimate version. The singleplayer part can always be pirated, and that's how it should be. Only if you make the product so good that people want to buy it to play online, you get rewarded.

By licensing cryengine2 game developers only need to have manpower on the modding and content creation side working, so a top title seller could be for instance a group of content creation artists. No software developers, renderer or engine -writers, no ai designers etc... just ppl who do the content creation and are tought to how to work with the cryengine2.

I predict that we are going to see a huge increase in game quality this summer as titles using cryengine2 start hitting the shelves beside the first title already there (read: crysis)...
edited.

[Pxtl]

Believe it or not, but cryengine2 will change the gaming world... When you buy cryiss you dont only get a good game in the deal, you get the license for the engine, so you can play all the massive amount of custom levels and missions thats available for download. Then, you can make your own stuff with it. And play online all the custom MOD content only if you have the legitimate version. The singleplayer part can always be pirated, fine, its not significant.

By licensing cryengine2 game developers only need to have manpower on the modding and content creation side working, so a top title seller could be for instance a group of content creation artists. No software developers and engine writers, no ai designers etc...

This is true for lots of companies - none of them have revolutionized gaming before. Torque is a dirt-cheap engine to license that was used for commercial games, and it hasn't revolutionized anything.

[ZellSF]

Fact: No, it's not. The last 5 years have been increasingly negative experiences for the large publishers. Have you not noticed that fewer and fewer PC titles that actually hit store shelves have been produced by a major house? It's not that the budgets don't exist- they're simply being spent elsewhere. On the console market.

So the major houses are starting to suck, that doesn't mean PC gaming isn't fine. Besides, for that matter, no, I have not noticed that fewer and fewer PC titles to hit store shelves have been produced by major houses. I've noticed all too well all the crap that is coming from the major houses nowaday.

You're wrong, again. Piracy has been a huge issue since the beginning with PC games, and it's hardly gone away. Go read about the impact of piracy on computer game sales on Google. It isn't just some vague problem, and it's gotten worse with file-sharing being much more widespread.

I've yet to see a single piece of actual evidence that gaming is hurt by piracy, it's all theories. If piracy hurts or doesn't hurt gaming is a very common discussion, much like it's a very common discussion if it hurts movies or music. There are no facts that actually mean anything in this matter.

Steam has been a business success. Obviously, customers don't think it sucks

Hey, I said I think it sucks, not that everyone else does. That it's a business success does not equal it not sucking.


Realize that these discussions have been done countless times on countless gaming forums. There aren't any "facts" here that are really in any way deciding for any argument.

That Supreme Commander and Crysis developers feels the need to start those pointless discussions again everywhere just because they fail miserably at creating games confuses me.

[KDR_11k]

IMO they both made technically awesome games but noone can play them and the "soft" quality (the gameplay and stuff) didn't rise much above average, they don't realize it and wonder why their games aren't the megasellers they expected.

[Snipawolf]

Piracy does NOT hurt sales. Why? Because if they pirated it, they either lack the money to buy it at the moment and will do it later. They are getting like me, where they like to test a game before they buy it, due to the massive shitstorm of released games. Another reason is that if it wasn't free, they wouldn't have downloaded it. Finally, they may just be an asshole who doesn't plan to buy it.

[SwiftSpear]

Neither crysis or supcom can run on my computer. And when I get a computer that can run the games, 2 or so years later, I'm more likely to buy a better acclaimed game than those titles with weak gameplay, and no real competitive multiplayer environment. If not a game that has matched the technical specifications later on.

You can't just create a technically impressive game, your game must have solid gameplay too. That's why Valve succeeds in selling HL2 better than Crisis succeed in selling Cryengine2. Frankly, in terms of solidity for a game engine, I think UT3 hit the nail on the head. Cryengine is pretty, but it's also stepped out ahead of it's time, and doesn't really have reasonable system requirements for running most games. With UT a modding team can build virtually any game environment and acctually run a decent game on it. Modders generally don't like art, because art is hard, so mod projects focus on gameplay solidity and gameplay experimentalization. An artistically powerful engine misses the point.

[Aeon_Illuminate]

Supporting the console is most idiotic thing you can do. Console only exist with sole purpose of profiting the game publishers, and there is almost no benefit to consumers when it comes to console. Consoles are basically a rip off due to the fact that everyone has the PC, and most of them allow users to play game on it. People are heavily biased by false understanding that game must be played on console. Why buy console when same quality game can be played on PC? PC can do more things than console, and yet PC prices is dropping while console prices rising. When someone buys a console, they have to buy something extra. Things like online multiplayer fee on xbox when PC multiplayers have always remained free. Also wireless adapter for xbox 360 costed around $100 when it worth around $15. These fees and pricing is another inevitable rip off consumers face, and the console can be said that it serves only to profit the company. I think people are blinded from the truth by looking at number of console sales and the high demands. PC can out perform most of the consoles out there, and there is no reason to buy something that is a rip off.

[SwiftSpear]

Supporting the console is most idiotic thing you can do. Console only exist with sole purpose of profiting the game publishers, and there is almost no benefit to consumers when it comes to console. Consoles are basically a rip off due to the fact that everyone has the PC, and most of them allow users to play game on it. People are heavily biased by false understanding that game must be played on console. Why buy console when same quality game can be played on PC? PC can do more things than console, and yet PC prices is dropping. When someone buys a console, they have to buy something extra. Things like online multiplayer has fee on xbox when PC multiplayers have always remained free. Also wireless adapter for xbox 360 costed around $100 when it only worth around $15. These fees and pricing is another inevitable rip off consumers face, and the console can be said that it serves only to profit the company. I think people are blinded from the truth by looking at number of console sales and the high demands. PC can out perform most of the consoles out there, and there is no reason to buy something that is a rip off.

Ya, bad marketing on the part of the PC market and good marketing on the part of console developers is a HUGE factor. The entrance requirements for PC gaming aren't all that high, but they seem more extreme because the industry does a very poor job of explaining itself to the average consumer.

People feel bad about buying a PC that is gaming capable for some reason, and the industry feeds into that by manufacturing shit integrated cards and very poorly standardizing system requirements.

[Aeon_Illuminate]

I had my first console back in 1995 I think. The console was a nintendo that my dad company gave us. Console was rectangular, and the game was quite disappointing. I never bought a console since. until PS3 came out which supposedly can install linux on it which gives very small resolution on the screen that you can't do anything. Console may have tempting game choices, but I will never buy another console for I know it has no benefit.

[BlueTemplar]

Things like online multiplayer fee on xbox when PC multiplayers have always remained free.

Don't you have to pay your ISP if you want internet on PC?

[rattle]

As if consoles come with one free internet...

[smoth]

Contrarian post with careless usage of profanity and many crude remarks. Followed by some meme related image with derail.

imagine it as a long post.

[Caydr]

Read much of it, skimmed the bits that I agreed with so no exposition was necessary.

Basically you're right, and the short answer is, I don't think the blame for this can be laid very easily... Consumers want things prettier and prettier and since the whole game development thing is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, the big companies haven't come together to determine how they are going to milk us for cash but rather just keep trying to one-up each other.

Example. Cars. Nothing that's in a car is cutting-edge. We're led to believe that it's cutting edge, but in fact, it isn't. They change the trim color and improve one feature by 10% and call it a year. This is because the entire car manufacturing industry knows it's in their best interest not to make crazy improvements because then they will ALL have to make crazy improvements and they'll stop making any money.

Not so with game development. When someone figures out a way to make shadows prettier, they jump on it and use it the instant they can, because they know somebody else probably will if they don't. So they rush it to market as soon as possible (unless they're Valve or another sensible company) and WOW ITS SO PRETTY OMG - but then everyone has to one-up them. So they spend more on art, and more on art, and more on art, until the art budget is 80% of the total development cost (Metal Gear Solid 4, anyone?) and they have to have a massive blockbuster in order to make a profit.

Even in consoles this is a problem. Every now and then one company goes nuts and does a Crysis or Half-Life or whatever, and now nothing's quite as pretty anymore. The ONLY reason consoles are better than PCs from a developer standpoint is that they know what they've got to work with and they can be reasonably certain that if they're competent, nobody will be able to make something dramatically better than they can. It's a relatively level playing field.

What needs to happen is, ATI and Nvidia get together and have a gentleman's agreement NOT to make major improvements more than once every couple of years. It'll never happen of course, until one of them is dead. Then things will stagnate and we'll get good PC games again.

In a way, the Wii is the best thing that could happen for game developers. It's "ancient" technology, it's got a huge install base, and it's easy to program for. Absolutely everyone wins, even the consumer. Games aren't as pretty, but who the hell cares in the face of the alternative?

[Pxtl]

In a way, the Wii is the best thing that could happen for game developers. It's "ancient" technology, it's got a huge install base, and it's easy to program for. Absolutely everyone wins, even the consumer. Games aren't as pretty, but who the hell cares in the face of the alternative?

Exactly why I bought one. Only disappointment is that we're not seeing the kind of fun budget-titles in the Wiiware that we're seeing on Live Arcade.

[KDR_11k]

Piracy does NOT hurt sales. Why? Because if they pirated it, they either lack the money to buy it at the moment and will do it later. They are getting like me, where they like to test a game before they buy it, due to the massive shitstorm of released games. Another reason is that if it wasn't free, they wouldn't have downloaded it. Finally, they may just be an asshole who doesn't plan to buy it.

Um WTF? Take Rattle here, he downloads every game instead of buying them. Bet you if he didn't have the option to download them he'd buy at least some of them.

I had my first console back in 1995 I think. The console was a nintendo that my dad company gave us. Console was rectangular, and the game was quite disappointing.

"The game"? You realize consoles have more than one game and if you just pick one game there's a 90% chance of it sucking?

[SwiftSpear]

Caydr: It's really not as much a case of technology improving too quickly, than it is companies willing to smash into a brick wall to be the first. I mean, we still have development studios like havok and Geometrics producing middleware solutions at full blast nearly all the time... That kind of thing isn't really going to go away, although it will eventually slow down. The thing is, companies investing effort in parallel stuff and ultimately doing the same work over and over again.

Middleware is really good for the industry, and it's good for the gamers. It's not necessarily good for the company who wants to beat everyone else to a certain technology, but that's their own cost, it's something rouge they are doing at the expensive of everyone.

What is really needed, and indeed is in development, are solutions that allow more art production in less time at higher quality. This kind of stuff is being generated all the time, but it's trickledown is frustratingly slow for the most part.