Its Been a Frustrating Year for the PC

cherryghost

Despite the influx of PC games this year(which I'm quite pleased about), theres no doubt in my mind that the games have been rush released, buggy, and restrained in some way for the consumer to play. Grand Theft Auto IV broke the donkeys back for me, I'm afraid.

The support for PC games this year has been great IMO, with such games as GRID, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, GTA IV, Assassins Creed and much more. The only thing that disappoints me is the points I have laid out.

- Rush release. Despite some games being delayed, the majority of the games feel rush released and unpolished. Only a few weeks later when they release 300mb patches to sort it only some of the bugs out, its still not acceptable. COD:WaW was full of bugs, but thanks to the beta, the fixes were released less than a day after release. But still.... the likes of Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 had problems, and to some people, still are a problem, leaves the game feel unfinished. As for GTA IV, lets not go there

- DRM/Whatever protection they have. Stops us from multiple installs or something of the likes. Its just not the way to go at all. Steam has the right idea for purchasing and downloading, its so much easier, but for those with lower connection speeds, we have no choice but to buy a hard copy, so why punish them? This year we saw SPORE getting its head bitten, and rightly so. Enough is enough. Surely they'll realise next year that this is not the way to go. Again, sorry for bringing GTA IV up again, but its the first boxed game to say *Can install unlimited times* written on the back. Thats more like it.

Anyway. I shall be off. You get the picture. To summarize, would have had a great year, but only for terrible management on the developers side, has left me a bit bitter.

Azza

Check my latest post on GTA IV on the pc in the GTA forum. Although it does not address the texture corruption issue or the x64 mutiplayer issue. I think there is a genuine reason for the poor performance people are experiencing.

From my experience Fallout 3 bugs have been relatively minor. I have not heard too many complaints against it.

Also a major patch for Far Cry 2 is due next week just to let you know with widescreen support and hopefully a fix for the DX10 memory leak issue which plagued me.

As for DRM. It does not bother me too much. If a DRM gives me trouble on my legit copy I crack it and not loose any sleep over it. I hope this concept of limited activations (not installs usually) is dropped though.

But yes the generally shoddy nature of some PC game releases is depressing and I really wish this was addressed. I think even old reliable Valve dropped the ball with Left 4 Dead. Its been like this for the last year or two and its pretty sicking. I'll cut them some slack over the fact that the PC is not fixed hardware or software unlike consoles. But some bugs are just so glarring you wonder do these companies employee QA departments at all.

cherryghost

aye, saw the post there. thanks for that

Sephiroth_dude

Next yr will be a better yr,some great games coming to us,and the first for me is empire total war in febuary :-).

SeantheMan

Would have to disagree and say its the best year for the PC in a long time !

The games that came out were amazing, the price of hardware dropping so much allowing for first class machines at a fairly cheap price, support from companies like Valve, constantly updating their games.
Steam....absolutely revolutionary this year....i love it.

But i see where your coming from with rushing games out...but console ports will always be highly buggy

Auvers

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

empire total war in febuary :-).

oh yes I think a weeks holidays might be taken when that comes out :cool:

GigaByte

SeantheMan wrote: »

Would have to disagree and say its the best year for the PC in a long time !

The games that came out were amazing, the price of hardware dropping so much allowing for first class machines at a fairly cheap price, support from companies like Valve, constantly updating their games.
Steam....absolutely revolutionary this year....i love it.

But i see where your coming from with rushing games out...but console ports will always be highly buggy

I'd have to agree with you on this being a very good year.

The cup is half full!

DirkVoodoo

I agree with the OP and I think its important for people to be able to distinguish between "great games for the PC" of which there were many and "Great PC games" of which very few were made.

We are seeing far too many games designed with console gaming and the console gamer demographic in mind. Fallout 3 highlights this pretty well. It was a great game, technically sound and looked best on the PC. However, as a 90s PC gamer I remember fallout 1&2 pretty well and they were proper RPG games with some very well designed quests, the ability to play some remarkably different classes by tweaking your stats and of course some crippling bugs. Fallout 3 had the sophistication of an underage youth in an off-license: the writing was juvenile, quests were far too easy (the compass icon makes finding your next objective trivial) and the altering of stats pretty much changed nothing (agility: just look at comparison between fallout and fallout 3 on AP).

Not to mention the interface was not even altered on the PC version, but a clumsy console mess that we first saw with oblivion.

The last truly "PC game" i played this year was Sins of a Solar Empire. I won't count crysis because it was a decent shooter that is simply known for its crippling requirements.

EDIT: I don't see how Steam is relevant? Its simply a way for publishers and developers to bypass the middleman and exert more control over the final product. It may have matured since its inception but its a bit like saying that its been a great year for music because apple continue to restrict the end-use of content. Be honest with yourself, what has been so great about the PC this year?

super_furry

I think the main problem is that every single one of the games mentioned by Cherryghost is a console game that's been ported to the PC. The PC is no longer a lead platform and is a secondary consideration to most companies that make their money on consoles and then try to wring out a few extra quid on the PC.

Hellm0

I have, to date, flat out refused to buy a console to play games. What options has this left me with? Very few in terms of quality games to play.

Is Hellm0 happy with this? Absolutely not.

Phototoxin

I disagree. I was disappointed the only games I have played to any length were battlefield 2 which i got on amazon and deus ex. I have also bought dreamfall which is old but going well. Older games were definatly better. Less show stopping bugs in them

PogMoThoin

super_furry wrote: »

I think the main problem is that every single one of the games mentioned by Cherryghost is a console game that's been ported to the PC. The PC is no longer a lead platform and is a secondary consideration to most companies that make their money on consoles and then try to wring out a few extra quid on the PC.

Wrong, FarCry2 and Left4Dead (although I've no complaints about L4D) aren't console ports, both were built for use with keyboard & mouse and ported to consoles.

Clear Sky is another one to add to the list of released unfinished, not a console port either.

Matt Simis

There were several good games out and they all had bugs. People argued over copy protection and console ports and end of days for the PC. No different from any other year. The Graphic card business was worth $3.8 billion this year and shipments increased by 11% year on year. Some solid numbers worth playing for..

I rather play a buggy game than wait (Valve style) years upon years per "episode" that still could very well have bugs (L4D Localhost server anyone?). I also appreciate the versatility that is PC Gaming platforms is the main cause of bugs. Bugs arent going away but its also what allows me to play games at 5040x1050 TripleScreen while GamerX plays on his 42" plasma and GamerY plays in Stereoscopic 3D. Locking down the Platform would eliminate lots of issues but make the PC nothing more than an expensive console.

If you dont want bugs, play on dedicated consoles (lesser bugs anyway). On that note I would also highly recommend anyone that actually plays games and not "platforms" to get a couple of consoles.
Hanging on to the PC/PS3/XB etc as "your thing" is sad, they are inanimate boxes with circuit boards inside and they arent even that different to each other these days.

DirkVoodoo

Matt Simis wrote: »

The Graphic card business was worth $3.8 billion this year and shipments increased by 11% year on year. Some solid numbers worth playing for..

Hardly conclusive. Whats the breakdown in terms of laptop vs desktop, high end card vs middle vs entry level?

Has the proportion of discrete cards gone up in factory systems after the introduction of Vista with the Aero interface?

All these numbers show is that it is a good time to be a GFX card maker and not necessarily a PC gamer. I read somewhere recently, can't find the article (work WITH me google!) that the "enthusiast" level of the GFX market makes upa fairly small percentage of the overall picture.

Matt Simis

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

Hardly conclusive. Whats the breakdown in terms of laptop vs desktop, high end card vs middle vs entry level?

Has the proportion of discrete cards gone up in factory systems after the introduction of Vista with the Aero interface?

All these numbers show is that it is a good time to be a GFX card maker and not necessarily a PC gamer. I read somewhere recently, can't find the article (work WITH me google!) that the "enthusiast" level of the GFX market makes upa fairly small percentage of the overall picture.

That wasnt my point at all.
All of the above are true except for the laptop component, its not really much of a factor as the stats cover discrete cards and very few laptops and even fewer laptop owners utilise upgrades.

Average selling price last quarter was $173 which given todays performance buys you a good chunk of performance. Its recent high was in Q2 2007 at a whopping $270ish. For an average of all discrete card sales, thats much higher than the figure should be if decent graphics cards made up tiny percentages (I have also seen this reported). It may be that if you include graphics enabled motherboard chipsets (Intel Extreme junk) then it skews the numbers.





However, I wasnt utilising the figures to "prove" anything, infact my point was this year was more the same than ever from a gaming perspective. I put them in to add some $ figures to the thread instead of just opinion, to highlight the PC graphics industries size (extremely closely related to entertainment) and to curb any "the recession is the blame" talk.