Pc Games standards dwindling because of Consoles

Falgorn

On a growing number of occasions over the last few months, I have read reviews and articles about how games are being made multiplatform, i.e. for PC & X-box most commonly but also including the Ps2. And the tide of pc games going to console is now being reversed, in my opinion to the detriment of pc game standards. I recently read a designer diary on how cuts were made in jedi academy because the x-box version needed to be kept in mind, and indeed having played it, and skill needed in Jedi outcast has now been replaced my console like combo's and pointless hack and slash. Also the lack of a graphics upgrade leaves me wondering... Game length seems to be getting shorter and shorter as games become more graphically intensive. A typical console trait. And major releases this year (Enter the Matrix & Splinter cell to name but a few) were so obviously cloned and not in any way tailored for the pc controller type that it was sickening.

When I hear a game is being designed multiplatform I automatically become very skeptical, as I have been (justifiably) with Jedi academy and the up and coming Deus ex 2. Even Blizzard is abandoning the pc community that made it huge, to produce starcraft ghost for consoles (and yes I know blizzard were originally console developers but come on, who heard of them before warcraft) I do believe that the quality of PC games will further suffer as more developers go multiplatform, and it does bother me when PC releases only get a graphics polish up and not a refined controller setup and extra levels. Also, why is it that multiplatform games are always enormous? Enter the matrix was a 3 - 4 hour game, with awful awful AI and worse graphics, how was it over 2 GB, when a game like Freelancer comes on 1 cd!!??

Shinji

I won't comment on most of what you say because it's pure opinion (and I don't agree with it), but the thing about game sizes is an interesting one.

Console games come on DVDs. This lets them store loads of high quality MPEG2 video, stupidly high resolution textures, tons of audio and so on. Space is never really an issue for the, and a LOT of console games are over 4gb in size.

PC publishers, however, refuse to release stuff on DVD - so when you go to port a console game to the PC, you have to reduce that down onto 640mb CDs.

The thing about multi-platform games is that the PC isn't very important for the majority of them, because the console versions will sell infinitely more copies. You make your most profitable platform (usually PS2) into the lead platform for your game, and then make small enhancements for other platforms - that's how game development works.

tHE vAGGABOND

dont forget that making games is a very expensive business, and making large, wonderfully designed, well tested games is more expensive again..

You need to sell a lot of copies to stay in business, and to be able to pay your staff wages and pay rent on your offices and all that kinda thing game players presume budda provides

A very large amount of PC games dont sell that well, and its piss easy to make a PC game into an XBox game (and vice versa) so what not?

KdjaCL

On the contrary every week peeps with consoles are hoping for a decent release whereas PC owners have a massive massvie back catologue of games.

And with everything make enough clones of a game and some will suck others wont.
Personally i find the PC to be one of the best for games mainly for the back catalogue and emulation and whena top game comes out like BF1942 or Hl2 the pc is really the only machine to play them on.

Pc games will always have a segment of the market and i cant see it getting any bigger but its still a large segment.

kdjac

Retr0gamer

I believe that the standards of the recent games have dropped because of shoddily developed games and not because of multi-platform releases. The gaming standards will probably increase during the video game silly season i.e. the run up to christmas and spring. Multi-format releases make great business sense to publishers and developers.

Isn't starcraft ghost being developed by a team outside Blizzard?

Deadwing

Personally i thought the situation was the other way around, and that console games are becoming poorer and poorer. I have all 3 major consoles now, and hadnt touched them since ooohh..around the time wind waker was released. I bought Tomb raider TAOD, but the less said about that the better.
I was seriously beginning to think id FINALLY gotten bored of video games, until i bought a new P.C., and jesus, i havent looked back since i had my first taste of BF1942. You just couldnt get a game that good on anything but a P.C., and i really do love my consoles, but bloody hell, i was blown away by a game for the first time in ages when i played that.
And look at the release dates of upcoming console games for further proof. The only one game that i can honestly say Ill buy on release day and HAVE to have is Soul Calibur 2, everything else i read about, or play a demo of, tends to be greeted with a 'Meh' at best.

j0e9o

i do understand ur point about multiplatfrom games most of the pc verisons have been crap but *** i see a change on the way with the likes of halo etc on the way where they take a console game and add to it

nesthead

i can only think of about 6 to 10 good games for each of the three consoles. and even fewer that good pc games released in the past year.
i think the whole games industry needs a jolt, a game to set the benckmarks for the rest, not sure if HL2 will do it now tho.....

Tusky

there are plenty of good games for all formats I think games are improving and improving too , Sure they are times when there isnt a great title released for a while , but look at the film industry , its the same thing... at the moment im looking forward to the follinwg...

-F-zero GX (GC)
-Mariokart : Double dash (GC)
-Star wars : kotor (PC)
-Half Life 2 (PC)
-Doom 3 (PC)
-Halo (PC)
-Freedom Fighters (multy)
-True Crime : Streets of L.A (multy)
-Star Wars Rogue squadron 3 (GC)

im sure ive left out a half dozen too

not to mention the ones that are quite far away like the new MGS , new GTA , new metroid and zelda , Monster Hunter , Killer 9 or 7 cant remember what its called....

and thats to name but a few , I think the industry is doing just fine and Im happy with the current state of multyformat games, means consoles dont get left out ( ala N64 ) and their owners left with a ( for the most part ) useless machine.... think if you ONLY owned a cube and there were no multy format games ? anywho im ranting !

[edit] : GG Amp your hardk0re

po0k

Originally posted by tHE vAGGABOND
dont forget that making games is a very expensive business, and making large, wonderfully designed, well tested games is more expensive again..

You need to sell a lot of copies to stay in business, and to be able to pay your staff wages and pay rent on your offices and all that kinda thing game players presume budda provides

A very large amount of PC games dont sell that well, and its piss easy to make a PC game into an XBox game (and vice versa) so what not?

Looking Glass *sniff*

Deadwing

Originally posted by Tusky
there are plenty of good games for all formats I think games are improving and improving too , Sure they are times when there isnt a great title released for a while , but look at the film industry , its the same thing... at the moment im looking forward to the follinwg...

-F-zero GX (GC)
-Mariokart : Double dash (GC)
-Star wars : kotor (PC)
-Half Life 2 (PC)
-Doom 3 (PC)
-Halo (PC)
-Freedom Fighters (multy)
-True Crime : Streets of L.A (multy)
-Star Wars Rouge squadron 3 (GC)

Ive played freedom fighters already, its...okaaaay..not ****e but nothing to write home about. Played the true crime demo too, seems okay, but again, nothing majorly radical. The only games on that list im looking forward to are the P.C games, Doom 3 and HL2. Rogue squadron should be good tho, hopefully
But as i said, by and large im just not that excited over console games until Resident Evil 4 comes out on GC tho...that looks F**kin sweeeeet.

milltown

This sentiment was echoed in an interview recently by, I think it was, Sid Meier. The biggest problem facing game developers for the PC is not the software but the hardware. Out of the hundreds or thousands of Boards members you would be hard pushed to find two of them with identical system configurations. i.e. CPU, gfx card, RAM, sound card etc. And to partly rubbish my rather sweeping statement above, the software running on it, as in the OS (98, ME, 2000, XP, we'll disregard Linux as we're talking games), the directx version and the driver version.
If you were ploughing resources into developing a game, how much more testing would you need to do to ensure it works properly with all those variables thrown into the equation? Alternatively you could aim it at a console, where every single one of your possible customer base, without exception, has exactly the same processor, GPU, drive etc. You test it on one machine and rest assured it will work on all others bearing that name. You can see fairly easily how economics become a factor.
Advertising seems to be more aggressive for console titles and a big budget is required here but look at the distribution network. When is the last time you walked into a video shop to rent a movie and walked out with a PC game? Add to this the fact that new console titles sell for over €50 a pop when most PC games can be bought online for less than €40.
Most PC gamers more than make up for the saving by having to fork out on new hardware to play the newest games fairly regularly.
I have got two good years out of my last graphics upgrade which didn't quite break the bank but it was a big purchase. I know that by early next year though I will need to stump at least €200 for a card to play the newest games and be future proof for another year or so.

But! I'm still well pleased with the recent games on PC. Vice city, MOHAA, Jedi Outcast, UT2K3 have given me plenty of enjoyment, while the wife can still watch television.

BlitzKrieg

Fact: Pc games last longer then console games. Due to internet support and more in depth gaming experiance nm wha u say about a controller u can do alot more with a keyboard.


Fact: Despite the large dvd space console games are still crinimally short. MGS2 Splinter Cell etc.

Fact: WE WANT LOOKING GLASS BACK!!!

-=Raven=-

Yes.. where to start.. where to start.


The cycle never ends does it. We could be back in 1995 and that first post would still stand.

I think people spend too much time complaining and not enough time playing.

We're always gonna have this pathetic ratio of quality/crap. Except that lately, imo it has changed slightly for the better.

Ps2 has some great games, GC has some great games, PC has some great games.


And if I may finish, I think that us gamers have never had it as good.

Ever.



And can I just say that the N64 was never 'left out' I can't understand why people think this. It had the best games of its generation easily. It was a great console.

The Dreamcast could be thrown into the N64 category aswell I suppose?!?!?!?

Why is it that anyone I have ever known who has owned a 64 or DC thinks that they were great machines?

Shinji

Fact: Pc games last longer then console games. Due to internet support and more in depth gaming experiance nm wha u say about a controller u can do alot more with a keyboard.

Later today, we'll be spending some time in English 101 discussing the difference between "fact" and "opinion". It'll be a fun ride kids, be sure not to miss out!

(The many ultra-short PC FPS games I own, and the several titles I've spent hours and hours playing either single-console multiplayer or over services like Xbox Live, tend to undermine your argument a bit. Not to mention the epic 40-50 hour RPGs.... Oh, and "more indepth gaming experience"? Did I MISS something when I played through Unreal II or Soldier of Fortune 2? Was there some complex character building, dialogue, statistical combat or underlying personality interaction model I utterly failed to notice?)

tHE vAGGABOND

Pc games last longer then console games. Due to internet support and more in depth gaming experiance nm wha u say about a controller u can do alot more with a keyboard.

lol - I have to disagree. Have you ever played any of the millions of console games that take 50+ hours to complete! Final Fantasy, Zelda, Super Monkey ball (since we were talking about it in another thread!) You have to remember that very few people play CS etc hundreds of hours a week, most game players will play the single player and then cast the game aside and move onto the next shiny thing to play.

I have been playing Vice City and GT3 on the PS2 for ages and ages, and Im no closer to finishing them. As rob said I too played though Unreal 2 in about 6 or 7 hours. I finished Warcraft 3 in a long weekend. All the platforms have short games. I think that its is because dev teams have to release games to pay the bills, and if you spend an extra 6 months making extra levels, what is the point, as a large number of people who buy the game will get it anyway (see: Unreal 2 and indeed Luigis Mansion as good examples!)

Read back thru GI.biz to see all the game dev studios that go under all the time. Im sorry but its games are a business, and unless you have your head screwed on, you will go the way of Looking Glass!

(for newer readers, Looking Glass Studios were a great dev studio in the mid 90's. They made amazing games that everyone played, but no one actually bought. Hence, they went out of business!)

Speaking of Keyboards, I was the lead tester on both Championshp manager games for the Xbox. There was a game no one thought would work without a keyboard or mouse, and it worked fine on the XBox controller. After the initial weirdness even Quake 3 on the Deamcast was not *that* bad. All it takes is the developer to think about it for a while, and for the user to be familar with the controller. You can get used to anything as long as you want to! ****, I even played AOE2 on the PS2 last month, now that was weird, but it was still playable.

Deadwing

Originally posted by Shinji
(The many ultra-short PC FPS games I own, and the several titles I've spent hours and hours playing either single-console multiplayer or over services like Xbox Live, tend to undermine your argument a bit. Not to mention the epic 40-50 hour RPGs.... Oh, and "more indepth gaming experience"? Did I MISS something when I played through Unreal II or Soldier of Fortune 2? Was there some complex character building, dialogue, statistical combat or underlying personality interaction model I utterly failed to notice?)

Hes got a point. Unreal 2 was enjoyable, but also instantly forgettable, when compared to Halo. Halo took a hackneyed story, but told it well and grafted onto sublime game mechanics, whereas Unreal 2 took a hackneyed plot, and grafted it onto nothing more than Quake 1's game mechanics.
I think on average, the P.C has as many sh**ty games as any console, but it also has as many blinders, I.E BF1942, Counter Strike, etc.
You just have to take the rough with the smooth.

KdjaCL

But when developers add in Tri Force charts as a way of adding up those extra hours the 1st post seems to have more truth in it.

I do serious research before i buy a game unless its €20 2nd had then i just buy it for the sake for buying but i have only bought 5 top price games in the last year.
Bf1942 (well worth it imo)
Unreal 2/2003 well it got better over time with mods and bonus stuff.
Iss3 good fun bought for quick games it does just that.
Zelda say no more ,consumed me for about a week
Metroid ,its in the fridge for a while cant beat it

The PC is the easiest to make games for and cheapest, €100 buys you a Torque engine licence, add in technet programs from Msft and you could make a game cheaper than for a console.
Whereas Consoles have stricter lines for coding as in only 1 way works , PCs can be manipulated a hell of a lot more.

As someone said there are only 10 top games for each Console ,so out fo every ten games released 1 is a keeper ( i think that is correct also) the PC is the same for every 10 RPGS 1 is superb etc:


kdjac

amp

Originally posted by Tusky

-Star Wars Rouge squadron 3 (GC)

Ah I know it's a typo but by god this made me laugh when I imagined a load of tarted up rebels attacking the death star:

Red Leader: I'm going to attempt to shoot the exhaust vent.

Rouge Leader: ooooh hark at him, that's a bit fresh. Use the force deary.

Red Leader: oh god.

Rouge Leader: Oh fudge, I've got a tie fighter on my back, and I hardly even know him! *titter*

tHE vAGGABOND

The PC is the easiest to make games for and cheapest,

If you read the small print BTW - that garage games licence is a lot more expensive than £100 if your game ever sells well, or gets as far as getting into the shops!

Good games, with good design, well written code, that work on AMD and Intel machines from the past and presnet and on ATI and Nvidia, and all the other things takes a lot of time and therfore money..

Otherwise half Life 2 and doom 3 or any 'big' game would have taken 6 months not several years and millions of quid would they

milltown

Originally posted by amp
Ah I know it's a typo but by god this made me laugh when I imagined a load of tarted up rebels attacking the death star:

Red Leader: I'm going to attempt to shoot the exhaust vent.

Rouge Leader: ooooh hark at him, that's a bit fresh. Use the force deary.

Red Leader: oh god.

Rouge Leader: Oh fudge, I've got a tie fighter on my back, and I hardly even know him! *titter*

ROFL! Nice one Amp.:D

Retr0gamer

Metroid ,its in the fridge for a while cant beat it

The mind boggles as to what this means

mewso

Good games, with good design, well written code, that work on AMD and Intel machines from the past and presnet and on ATI and Nvidia, and all the other things takes a lot of time and therfore money..

Come now Vagga we have the oh so wonderful DirectX for all that. Seriously though surely a game developer worries about the API (DX, OpenGL) and not the hardware. Can't do much about the hardware.

I don't own a console, never have, probably never will. Thats because I've always had a softspot for what you can do with a game after you've completed it. Buying a vacant game experience like Unreal2 is not a total washout for me when I know I get to tinker with the latest 3D game engine. (each to their own I know).

But to be honest think of your favorite game ever and ask yourself would it have lost anything depending on the platform. Probably not because you probably loved it for reasons that did not depend on graphics or stupendous sfx (always a bonus I agree).

Remember the good old days when we had the Speccy or the Comodore 64. Game programmers had to make better games without the advantage of the hardware improving. Oh sunny days they were. Honest.

KdjaCL

Originally posted by Retr0gamer
The mind boggles as to what this means

Means im stuck and cant get past a bit ,so the game goes in the fridge for a while

kdjac

tHE vAGGABOND

Seriously though surely a game developer worries about the API (DX, OpenGL) and not the hardware. Can't do much about the hardware

But your game has to work with all of it..

If your l33t new engine does not work on laptops or on AMD K6 2's or early SB Live Drivers or even the latest AMD Det's you have to make a choice, either ignore that section of your users or make sure your game works on every situation in advance or at the very worst have a work around for those users..

Example: EA plain dont support laptops anymore, if your copy of madden crashes on your laptop, tough ****.

Example 2: CM 4 Beta Demo did not work on AMD K6 2's. We got 100's of emails and angry rants on our message boards from pe0ns who did not mind that their machine was below the min spec for the game, and wanted the demo to work. We had to sort that out for the full game, and it took a while, but unlike EA customer serivce matters to us!! (but we could have done an EA and just ignored them!)

Greenbean

Even if, in an ideal world, directx was enough of an api to speak directly to sound, graphics and input hardware you've still got to look after alot of other different things.

First off, memory - different memory sizes, differen't memory speeds.

Cpu's - a pc can come with a different cpu and motherboard combination. Specific cpu's come with specific enchanced instructions you'd be a fool to miss out on (must note the benefits of using something like VectorPC from codeplay which optomises code into efficient assembly for specific cpus with some, non-minor, tweaking from developers). Cpu's throw up basic fundamental issues such as different precision on floating point calculations and different cpu states. Obviously cpu's come in different speeds as well.

When it comes to things like synchronsing computers over a network, or relying on clock cycle timing for optimisation pcs are fundamentally buggered and need a different approach.

Back to the api thing again. Api's don't always work. Sometimes the spec isn't rigid enough, sometimes api commands only work for specific sets of hardware and sometimes hardware just does its own thing regardless of the api. Eg, Some first generation dx9 cards don't have all the dx9 card effects (I think, but even if it wasn't true, I'm still going to have to check just to be certain). Theres just no way a developer could release a game without testing it on a sizeable range of different hardware, and there would be utter shock if some problems didn't show up with the different configurations.

If someone came out with some api, engine, middleware and stated that it would work with all possible configurations of hardware in the past and would be stable in the future I'd probably call them a liar. If they stated it would work really really well, but would need obvious patching for unforeseablle problems with various hardware, sub api issues, compilers, special case scenarios then I'd probably believe them.