Is the game industry trying to kill off PC gaming?

KdjaCL

L31mr0d wrote:

Well you only have to google "Bioshock crashing" to see i'm not alone with this. You might be lucky in that it didn't happen to you, but I know of a couple of friends personally who are experiencing the same issue on PC's ranging from laptop, DELLs to my own home built, they have all had game crashes and freezes. The only guy that was laughing was the guy playing it on his console

I am afraid to turn on my xbox in case i get 3 red lights and pro evo out soon, every game i have has glitches that make the game unplayable i think of it as time controlled gaming, i play as long as the 360 lets me.

google "xbox crashing" bet it wins vs "bioshock crashing" in a googlefight


kdjac

projectmayhem

KdjaCL wrote:

I am afraid to turn on my xbox in case i get 3 red lights and pro evo out soon, every game i have has glitches that make the game unplayable i think of it as time controlled gaming, i play as long as the 360 lets me.

google "xbox crashing" bet it wins vs "bioshock crashing" in a googlefight


kdjac

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=bioshock+crash&word2=xbox+crash

L31mr0d

KdjaCL wrote:

I am afraid to turn on my xbox in case i get 3 red lights and pro evo out soon, every game i have has glitches that make the game unplayable i think of it as time controlled gaming, i play as long as the 360 lets me.

google "xbox crashing" bet it wins vs "bioshock crashing" in a googlefight


kdjac

lets call apples apples here shall we. The problem you are talking about is due to poor hardware design NOT bad software design, which is what we are discussing.

Aaron M

Maximilian wrote:

No, I don't know too much about them, as consoles are for children and people who can't afford PC's.

It's obvious you don't know much about anything with a comment like that.

Maximilian wrote:

As for WoW on a console - I promise you I will purchase and eat a hat of your chooising should this ever happen.

It's only a matter of time before MMO's of one form or another hit the console arena. It's not a question of if, it's only a question of when.

Maximilian

Aaron M wrote:

It's obvious you don't know much about anything with a comment like that.



It's only a matter of time before MMO's of one form or another hit the console arena. It's not a question of if, it's only a question of when.

Baiting ftw!

humanji

Maximilian wrote:

Baiting ftw!

lol

mcgovern

Maximilian wrote:

No, I don't know too much about them, as consoles are for children and people who can't afford PC's. As for WoW on a console - I promise you I will purchase and eat a hat of your chooising should this ever happen.

Eg:

From http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/15-01-2007-4497.html



No ****.

I have a ~3 month old PC and I think the only kid in this thread is you, Mr. Fanboi.
There are already MMOs on consoles. Obviously the Wii would not be a good choice for a game like WoW, but its not meant for that type of game.
The PS3 and 360 are more than a match for it and could run it in their sleep.

Maximilian

Jesus, has nobody a sense of humour? Am I the only one who thought that Wii quote funny? I have a 360 FYI - I use it as an expensive mp3 player hooked up to my TV. The HD-DVD player is nice though. My PC is easily better for gaming, I don't give a crap what anyone says.

Dustaz

Azeroth is now the 90th most populated country in the world and people are paying a tenner a month to live there.

the Wii has attracted more new gamers than everything else put together in the last 10 years (nb, i completely made that up, but its pretty much the truth.)


Put these two together and you have the future of gaming. both pc and console.

There will always be room for both and their completely seperate gaing ideologies. PC's will always offer more in-depth and emergent gameplay while consoles will always offer quick easy and hassle free gaming.

gizmo

As for EPIC's take on the sitation...

The reason [that crossplatform play between PC and PS3 will not ship with the title is], according to Mark Rein from Epic, was that it takes much longer to get a console build up and running because of lengthy certification processes - a problem also experienced by patches.

Synchronising the two, then, would mean constantly holding back PC users so the PS3 could catch up. This wasn't an option Mark Rein and his can of soda liked.

"Our PC fan base is of ultimate importance to us. They are our bread and butter. We can't let them down or compromise their experience in any way to accommodate cross-platform play," insisted Rein.

Creamy Goodness

pity the dev's of deus ex2 didn't have epic's take on this situation.

Naikon

L31mr0d wrote:

The last game I can remember playing through without a hitch was HL2. Since then the standard of games, imo, has been going downhill.

You have got to be kidding;)
Half life 2 upon release was diabolical to an extent.

Great game no doubt, but the combination of so much hype, and that horrible "stuttering" bug which was a big flaw in the caching system used for pre-caching sound data(or lack of) ruined it somewhat.
I remember building a new system for that game, so my PC wasn't at fault really.
I also remember some dude on the steam forums released a workaround a few weeks/months later whereby the user had to manually load sound files during play, which instantly solved the problem.

That stutter bug wasn't fixed for nearly two years, and alas when Vavle brought out the friends beta patch it suddenly fixed the bugs.
We need another innovation game like the original half-life or Deus Ex.

Naikon

Cremo wrote:

pity the dev's of deus ex2 didn't have epic's take on this situation.

QFT, and Deus Ex 3 doesn't sound too good either without Warren Spector:(

Creamy Goodness

i agree naikon, the stuttering thing was fairly annoying. but half-life2 was one of the first games on steam where there was a huge rush for it and was also the first major game released on steam.

since then steam has gotten much much better but it did take half-life2 to figure out these flaws.

i may not entirely agree with valve all the time (ala counter-strike) but they have built a great content delivery system in steam.

Naikon wrote:

QFT, and Deus Ex 3 doesn't sound too good either without Warren Spector:(

lol hadn't read that, that's just rediculous it would be like the bible without Jesus in it.

Naikon

Cremo wrote:

lol hadn't read that, that's just rediculous it would be like the bible without Jesus in it.

Yeah, they have cleaned things up nicely since then I admit.
The super id software pack for example is a very nice through steam.
Mind you, scaling the res in some games to 1280x1024 can be troublesome considering the age of some games.

here is the link for "Dues ex" 3 for any interested party:D

http://pc.ign.com/articles/789/789321p1.html

gizmo

Cremo wrote:

pity the dev's of deus ex2 didn't have epic's take on this situation.

Still attempting to play through that at the minute but not matter how hard I try I can't seem to give a damn about the characters or the story. Don't even get me started on the consolistion of the game though. :mad:

Dacelonid

tman wrote:

My experience has been the total opposite, I can't remember having any issues with a new release pc game in the past few years, certainly nothing that has made the game unplayable without a patch anyway...
Bioshock didn't crash once for me, and even the beta of TF2 has been a problem free experience after they patched it on Wednesday.

And as for constantly upgrading, it can be a pain in the ass, but you can't beat the satisfaction of running a new release with everything maxxed out...

Same here, I can't actually remember once buying a game and having issues with it. The only time I can remember buying a game and not being able to play it was when I got FEAR. Had to buy a new machine to play that one.
Other than that, every game I bought has worked straight out of the box.

Benzino

According to an analyst(:rolleyes: ): "The PC game business is expected to grow over 80 percent over the next five years."

source

KdjaCL

Bought Quake wars and it wont work

I should have said nothing


kdjac

CyberGhost

KdjaCL wrote:

Bought Quake wars and it wont work

I should have said nothing


kdjac

LOL ^




Console market is more profitable, and it's less hassle and it's less risky(piracy wise)

It's only natural the develepers will switch, I don't remember but it might have been the same when PS2/Xbox came out, but once PC substantially surpasses consoles yet again, we'll see more quality titles and less ports too.

Kiith

I haven't had any major issues with any new pc games in the past year or so, and i cant really remember if there were many before that. Bar the occasional crash (which more to do with my psu i think) and the Stalker debacle, they have all worked perfectly. Not a single crash in Bioshock, WiC works perfectly, Half Life 2 was an absolute joy, etc etc etc...

Pc gaming is here to stay.

astrofool

Cremo wrote:

lol hadn't read that, that's just rediculous it would be like the bible without Jesus in it.

Like Judaism?

humanji

astrofool wrote:

Like Judaism?

He's in that, actually;)

layke

It's not the creators of the game that spit out ultra buggy 1.0 releases it's the investors and other business partners looking for a cash return as quick as poss.

The common thing now is to release a game and fix it later. Until you get rid of the rich suits pushing for the release while still in test phase you'll continue to see this sort of crap. Frankly i'd like to see an Xbox handle wow or the 2 biggie upcoming releases; Age of Conan or Warhammer.

Cremo wrote:

i agree naikon, the stuttering thing was fairly annoying. but half-life2 was one of the first games on steam where there was a huge rush for it and was also the first major game released on steam.

since then steam has gotten much much better but it did take half-life2 to figure out these flaws.

i may not entirely agree with valve all the time (ala counter-strike) but they have built a great content delivery system in steam.


lol hadn't read that, that's just rediculous it would be like the bible without Jesus in it.

That's a classic example, Vivaldi (their disti company) pushed for early release which as a result left us with a crappy crashy content delivery system that in all fairness wasn't ready at the time of it's release. Today fortunately Steam is actually ok, dispite the fact it won't stay in games 'minilist mode' after I close it. I have no major issues with it.

mcgovern

layke wrote:

Frankly i'd like to see an Xbox handle wow or the 2 biggie upcoming releases; Age of Conan or Warhammer.

Google is your friend so, Age of Conan is coming out on the Xbox 360 and there are a few gameplay vids out there.

Oh wait, you mean you think the 360 couldn't handle it because its not a pc....:rolleyes:

po0k

Multiplatform Development: Solid long-term APIs & open standards that actually get implemented correctly by game developers and OS/Hardware vendors, "XP" style unit/code slice testing. Your game shouldn't care nor need to care about what hardware it's running on. Solid code is solid code.
The platform should take care of that.
With the exception of the Wii, the current gen are all pretty similar in capability: multicore cpus, decent graphics, local storage, broadband, media functions. There are architectural differences, but there is a performance parity between the three platforms.
Something like OpenGL+OpenAL+SDL+xyzMiddleWare makes games (and apps) more easily portable between platforms. The downside is design by committee and a degree of homogenisation of games, particularly when licensing 3rd-party engines and certain types of middleware.
MS XNA is a step in the right direction, though it's a bit of a con imho, having to pay MS a [relatively] substantial amount of money to play homebrew games which are tied to MS platforms.

I would like to see a revival of BSD/Linux and an acceleration of OSX releases, even devs out-sourcing the porting process to dedicated houses, as those platforms mature and stabilise. Gwan the POSIX compliance and proper 3D drivers.

Online accounts/profiles: If you want to play the game [online/multiplayer], you'll have to have paid for it.

Good demos. Half-Life: Uplink is the benchmark from off the top of my head. The demo was free, didn't cost much to produce, and was the sole avertisement that sold me on the game. And to cap it all, it wasn't the same content/story/maps from the retail game.
As demos become massive download affairs, warezing an iso is becoming synnonymous with playing a demo. The downside is for singleplayer games, that rarely translates into an actual purchase later on. Online distribution is a healthy alternative for those of us who can't be arsed dealing with bricks&mortar stores. It's just a pisser that there isn't an equally healthy discount for buying it online.

Also, Fúck EA.

KdjaCL

Unreal 3 runs ****ing perfectly and stunningly on my pc, after MOHAA and Bioshock i kinda expected it but for a beta Demo i have to thinkg this thread isnt as accurate as it seems.



kdjac