Are Consoles Holding Back PC Gaming?

[NRP]

I do wish there were more games that supported PC + 360 multiplayer. I think that would be fun. Probably the only publisher who would bankroll such a game would be MS though.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I do wish there were more games that supported PC + 360 multiplayer. I think that would be fun. Probably the only publisher who would bankroll such a game would be MS though.

That was my biggest hope actually when X360 launched. But MS remains hardheaded in keeping Xbox Live on console a closed system due to concerns about cheating, hacking, etc.

A mistake on their part I think. If Xbox Live multiplayer could be done between PC and X360 gamers, I think that would be a nice marketing point.

Then again, PS3 online multiplayer isn't as strictly controlled and publishers on that platform refuse to offer cross platform multiplayer also.

Regards,
SB

 

[Scott_Arm]

I used to like the idea of cross platform play, and it might be good with some titles, but hacking is a huge huge problem in the PC world, and I'd rather not have my console experience polluted. It's nice knowing that everyone has as level a playing field as can be guaranteed.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I used to like the idea of cross platform play, and it might be good with some titles, but hacking is a huge huge problem in the PC world, and I'd rather not have my console experience polluted. It's nice knowing that everyone has as level a playing field as can be guaranteed.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I stopped playing online (except MMOs) a long time ago. Map hacks, bots, glitches, etc. Was still there in MMO's just not as blatant or as common.

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

Not sure about cross platform multiplayer, the glorious pc gaming master race would would reign hot flak deth upon the console gamers still wet behind the ears noob little heads

 

[NRP]

Perhaps that's true, or perhaps some PC gamers would be surprised. But ultimately, who cares? It just would be fun to play together.

 

[Neb]

Oh Davros your so kind to our fellow gamers!

 

[aaronspink]

I do wish there were more games that supported PC + 360 multiplayer. I think that would be fun. Probably the only publisher who would bankroll such a game would be MS though.

There was such a game once: Shadowrun. It is a shame the funding was cut half way through and they had to make it multiplayer only. Even at that, I still think it had some of the most innovative multi-player game mechanics so far.

 

[Davros]

interesting article
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/12_ways_consoles_are_hurting_pc_gaming

 

[joker454]

interesting article
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/12_ways_consoles_are_hurting_pc_gaming

I'd say he missed three far more pertinent things that held back pc gaming that have nothing to do with consoles:

1) People clinging to Windows XP which meant all but forcing dx9 to be the baseline of all pc games until relatively recently, as Xp finally starts to die.

2) People shifting to laptops which by and large have gpu's that are ass.

3) Gpu manufacturers pricing good hardware so high that many pc gamers either clung to their 8800's for years or upgraded to cheap compromise cards.

Ultimately I think there is lots of blame to go around as to why things have become what they have become. Some of his points I disagree with though, to me pc gaming is best appreciated from the couch on a huge tv hooked to a home theater setup, that's where the beefy pc hardware can really strut it's stuff and blow people away. In that respect I like that games are being made to function with gamepad because they will work better in a home theater environment, and work better for multiple players.

 

[swaaye]

I think it's a complex wreck of an industry. But there's no doubt that the fact that the PC is probably less than 1/3 the audience for a lot of modern games is the real reason budgets don't include pushing the fancy PC hardware anymore.

When they finally get around to making the next round of mini living room game heaters, I would imagine that DirectX 12 or whatever will be the norm by them will be leveraged to match up to the new console hardware. But in the meantime buying PC hardware seems like a waste of money IMO. I should have stuck with my 8800GTX.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Yet ironically, when I see multiplatform games advertised on TV, all the ads flash up "representative of PC game". So because the PC games look so much better, they are being used to provide the in-game footage while the game is advertised to consoles. Sims 3, Crysis 2, Dragon Age 2, Shift 2 Unleashed, etc..

 

[AlphaWolf]

This whole topic is crap PC games are flourishing. Farmville, mafiawars etc. PC gaming is at its peak.

 

[swaaye]

This whole topic is crap PC games are flourishing. Farmville, mafiawars etc. PC gaming is at its peak.

Some kinds of it are for sure. Strategy, MMOG, some indie genres, etc. But the FPS/TPS and CRPG genres that most people here seem to be interested in are not PC focused anymore. And of course some genres have just gone away because they don't sell well enough apparently.

 

[Malo]

I think AlphaWolf was being facetious, at least I hope so.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I think AlphaWolf was being facetious, at least I hope so.

Only partially. All gaming has evolved from what was once expected. Consoles and casual has certainly had an impact, but it has done so because the market has demanded it. If "PC Gamers" had the clout and will to sustain the market as it once was, there would have been no such migration.

 

[green.pixel]

Some kinds of it are for sure. Strategy, MMOG, some indie genres, etc. But the FPS/TPS and CRPG genres that most people here seem to be interested in are not PC focused anymore. And of course some genres have just gone away because they don't sell well enough apparently.

Depends what kind of FPS. Big budget lowest common denominator crap like CoD, no, but there are Heroes of Stalingrad, NS2 and Depth. There are mods with more complexity and significantly higher skill cap than almost all commercial releasess nowadays. Why? Big budgets and high production values which lead to dragging everything down to the lowest common denominator which sucks all the fun out of the game. TPS (especially the cover-based chessed-high walls one) was never a PC thing, expect a few expections. CRPG? Just because Bioware/Lionhead can get away with streamlining/simplifying/mainstreaming doesn't mean there aren't games in the genre that are PC-focused. Sure, they are indie, but that shouldn't be a problem for people who are interested in those kinds of games I think.
.

All gaming has evolved from what was once expected

It has devolved in a lot of espects, but this is not the topic for that.

 

[green.pixel]

Here's what Ian Fischer, former lead designer at Ensemble, wrote about PC gaming and industry in general:
http://insidevoice.com/?p=114



And here is what Adrian Werner, the guy behind all those yearly PC lists, said about all this:

The only thing that's dying is big budgeted action and RPG exclusives. PC gaming has moved into it's own comfortable niche and it's doing better than ever there.

Big budgeted mainstream exclusives were killing the things I loved on this platform. The trend started around HL1's release and cultimated in HL2's premiere. 2004 was the height of this trend, we got awful lot of big budgeted exclusive that year, the problem was that they killed pretty much every genre that wasn't FPS and RTS. Throw in some rare RPG here and there and that was all PCgaming was getting. Genres like adventure, wargames, simulators, 4Xes and many others were either already near extinction or quickly heading towards it.
Niche games are great, but they just can 't compete for gamer's and press' attention with those big blockbuster exclusives. So they were dying out quickly.

The move of all those PC giants to consoles has created awful lot of breathing space on PC. This is one of the main reasons why we've seen such ressurgence of niche genres in recent few years. DD helped also, but the ressurgence is visible also in retail too. Without the need to compete with giants smaller devs can easily survive on the market. That's why not only so many new devs are being born, but also why we've seen so many veteran PC designers go back to PC gaming, after spending decade or so on retirement.

PC gaming right now is quickly turning into modernized version of what it was in 80s and early 90s. Sure, it would be great to have both niche and big budgeted exclusives, but realisticaly the later can't exist without hurting the former to some degree.
To me the current situation is a very welcome and healthy compromise. We get amazing niche development, which regularly provides us with hardcore exclusives.
And on high production values front we still do get many of them, sure most are RTSes and MMOs, but ocassionaly we will also get some RPG or action game. And if that's not enough you can always turn to PC versions of multiplats. Sure, they aren't designed perfectly to work on PC, but most of the time they are high quality and very enjoyable to play on PC, which just didn't happen 10 years ago. We do of course also get some crappy port from time to time, but even it is most of the time playable and there are also cases when console-centric games have their best versions on PC. If somebody would tell me 8-10 years ago that late port from consoles can sometimes actualy be the best version I would think they are completely crazy.

And later in that thread in response to the poster on GAF who made this thread. Wall of text:

Spoiler

Modern niche games often have bigger budgets that what you considered "large" in late 90s. However around the time Half-life debuted the acceptance for niche dropped to hell. People were stiill making them, but in majority of cases those titles turned into swan songs. One niche game after another was launching and then flopping epically, dragging it's devs down. Nowadays niche games are doing fine, while back then they often led to death of the developer who was making them. The moment FPS and RTS populairity reached their peak was the moment everything else started to slowly die out.

...

They did tempt devs, but what's more important is that they tempted gamers. Every market has limited ammount of money in it. As long as there are only small fishes in that pond it's ok, but once you put couple giants in there the food is no longer enough to sustain the whole ecosystem, the smaller predators die out. Eventualy the big fished grew into sizes that were too big even the whole pond, so they needed to jump to another to keep growing.
However once they left, there suddenly was once again plenty of food there, thus the population of small fishes started to slowly getting rebuilt.

If you look at sales of big PC hits you will notice that before late 90s it was rare for a game to sell many millions of copies. When million or even multimillion sellers started to become more common, they simply have eaten a large portion of how much money there was left to be spent on less pretty, more niche and less advertised products. PC market was constantly growing during 90s, but not fast enough.

...

DD helps with two biggest hurdles for any niche product: avaibility on shelves and profit margins. This along with less competition from giants has created much more friendly enviorement for independent devs (I don't mean just indie, but broadly those devs that aren't owned by everybody else) and it shows. Look at it this way, on consoles DD is much weaker and there market is filled with big budgeted games, have you noticed that in few shorts years independent console devs became almost extinct? While on PC they still form the majority of active studios.

...

Even those niche genres are more popular now than they were in their "golden eras" or ten years ago. More people play those games than ever before. The only difference is that other genres' popularity grew faster, that's all.

...

You're lookin at reality of those years through rosse colored glasses. In late 90s and early 00s the only reason why you saw plenty of games from many genres is because devs were too blind to see that by making them they were killing their company. There never was a period where FPS/RTS and niche genres were both hugely popular. Once the former became popular the market turned to slaughterhouse to everything else. To me it's not "PCgaming at it's best" when niche releases mostly meant death to it's devs.

...

We already are way past the point where tech was the primary apsect that determined production values of games. I can directly compare production values and budgets and see both are higher now even for niche. I can't see how can you assume that in market that's fully commercionalized and valued in dozens of billions of dollars there would be no budget differences between products that are aimed at smaller audiences vs ones that are aimed for mass public. THose less mainstream genres are doing now much betteer than 10 years ago, they sell better, they are more popular than ever, they have bigger budgets and production values than ever before. They grew a lot, you're just complaining it's not enough and they should have grew as much as mainstream genres, despite the fact that you won't find a single market on Earth that would develop in such way.

...

Sure, but it doesn't grow fast enough. You see it now on consoles too, it led to death of independent developers and extinction of 3rd party exclusives and is responsible for decline of many game companies today. Consoles are just experiencing it a many years after PC gaming went through the same thing.

...


I just don't understand why do you assume every segment of the market has to grow exactly at same rate in both popularity and resources being spent on projects to not be considered as "having a problem".

....

You need to stop imagining those titles ever were "large scale productions". They never were, they always were niche and always were small productions by any rational means. They just stayed that way and continued to grow inside their own niche, while we also have gotten PC titles that managed to grow out of their own niche and became mainstream. But just because other games didn't achieve that doesn't mean they are in sorry state They are doing better than they were 10 years ago and that's a simple fact. The only difference between us is that I'm satisfied with just that, while you think they didn't grow anywhere enough.

What do you think?

 

[Jedi2016]

I'd say he missed three far more pertinent things that held back pc gaming that have nothing to do with consoles:

1) People clinging to Windows XP which meant all but forcing dx9 to be the baseline of all pc games until relatively recently, as Xp finally starts to die.

2) People shifting to laptops which by and large have gpu's that are ass.

What I think the developers need to do here is simply not bow down, but rather raise the bar. "Sorry, this game won't run on XP or your laptop. Good day. I SAID GOOD DAY."

If the game is good enough, and the gamers really do think of themselves as PC gamers, they'll get the upgrade that comes with it. Frankly, it's not that hard.. I've got a more or less modern computer that I've put together over the last couple years, either because I needed the upgrade for something else, or something broke and needed replacing. As almost purely a side effect, the thing can play pretty much everything out there.

Sadly, the developers aren't going to do that. With very few exceptions, most developers seem to view the PC as just another platform to develop for, and the big conglomerates/publishers like EA refuse to let the developers take advantage of the extra power, solely because 75% of their market (the console market) won't be able to use that advantage.

Crytek didn't do anyone any favors recently, with this DX9 business. The only advantage we have anymore is the screen resolution, and that ain't gonna cut it. Hell, about the only reason I plan to (eventually) buy it on PC is because it's a shooter. For other upcoming stuff (Elder Scrolls V), I'll have to look carefully to see if Bethesda actually put any real effort into the PC version. Otherwise, I'll just pick it up on Playstation. Sad but true.

 

[joker454]

What I think the developers need to do here is simply not bow down, but rather raise the bar. "Sorry, this game won't run on XP or your laptop. Good day. I SAID GOOD DAY."

Look at it the other way. PC gamers by and large, even the vocal ones, don't seem to be willing to spend even $275 to get a good gpu. Even if I made it easy for them with a link, like a 570 for $275, no tax and free shipping:

http://dealsea.com/view-deal/49212

...I bet almost no one here would upgrade. If the pc gamers themselves aren't willing to spend the money, then how can a developer be convinced to spend the money to target said hardware that pc gamers won't buy in the first place? I'd be really interested in knowing what the typical gpu hardware is of people on this very forum. How much you want to bet that >50% of the people here have 5770 level of gpu power? I'd be curious as well as to how many game on laptop.

The only advantage we have anymore is the screen resolution, and that ain't gonna cut it.

Well to be fair the advantages are more like better resolution, texture filtering, shadows, draw distance, frame rate, anti aliasing, full resolution post processing, fp16 color, load times, choice of input, mods, etc... You really should get Skyrim on pc btw

The move of all those PC giants to consoles has created awful lot of breathing space on PC. This is one of the main reasons why we've seen such ressurgence of niche genres in recent few years

The breathing room part is an interesting point, hopefully that means someone will be willing to step in and really wow people (next Battlefield perhaps) now that Crytek has stepped down from that role. I wonder what niche titles he is refering to as enjoying a ressurgence. Point and click adventure titles sure have (much to my glee) but what other genres?