Are PCs holding back the console experience? (Witcher3 spawn)

[Deleted member 13524]

As I stated before, I believe the initial TW3 2013 E3 reveal was (is) more scripted for cinematic purposes, with very controlled lighting, shadowing, and gobs amount of effects that probably required offline re-rendering on speeding things up (framerate). Honestly, it's Killzone 2, Watch Dogs, ACU and MKX all over again... but this is nothing new to the industry.

If you guys (TW3 downgrade headhunters) can provide live 2013 E3 video showing CDRED or attendees actually playing the reveal (with gamepad), then I will bow out gracefully from this conversation...

For the love of god, read my post again.
That picture is not a comparison between the 2013 trailers and the final game. It's a comparison between the gameplay demo shown in 2014 and the final game. Some things may be subject to angle or lighting conditions, but that building's carefully sculpted edge was simply removed and it's now the intersection between two simple planes.
You can't trick your way out of that with day time, angles, or whatever. The asset is just gone.
The only explanation I could see is if the guy making the nVidia promo screenshots decided to take them with the option of geometry detail turned down. Which would make zero sense.

 

[Shortbread]

For the love of god, read my post again.
That picture is not a comparison between the 2013 trailers and the final game. It's a comparison between the gameplay demo shown in 2014 and the final game. Some things may be subject to angle or lighting conditions, but that building's carefully sculpted edge was simply removed and it's now the intersection between two simple planes.
You can't trick your way out of that with day time, angles, or whatever. The asset is just gone.
The only explanation I could see is if the guy making the nVidia promo screenshots decided to take them with the option of geometry detail turned down. Which would make zero sense.

I wasn't responding to you, when I made my last post (Hell, I didn't even quote you)!

I was asking anyone was there any actual live 2013 E3 TW3 demonstration gameplay footage (with gamepad)... since the majority of the outcry is about TW3 not looking like the initial reveal.

 

[dobwal]

Consoles holding PC gaming back? Pfft. Consoles makes the prospect of returns much higher than deving just for a PC title. If not for consoles, the development wouldn't warrant the level of investment needed to produce super highend visuals in a large open world game.

 

[Davros]

I havnt been following this thread but, did we win ?

 

[homerdog]

We won when they announced the Xbox One would have a 7770 GPU and a tablet CPU in it. Or maybe that means we lost? I don't know what the rules are.

 

[orangpelupa]

Probably people will mod the FX back like watch dogs

 

[aaronspink]

Chris Roberts has claimed that he wants Star Citizen to be the next "Will it play Crysis?" game. But Chris Roberts wants the game to be the next everything, which makes me wonder if it'll even become the next anything-at-all.

Well to put it in perspective, Chris Roberts has released 1 game where the recommended specs weren't actually available officially at time of release (they released like 1 week later). So yeah. And lets not forget his cohort in crime Lord British who also had a habit of releasing games that required the latest and greatest. When UO released it was pretty much only playable on the latest and greatest (Pentium) which was basically brand new.

 

[eastmen]

Well to put it in perspective, Chris Roberts has released 1 game where the recommended specs weren't actually available officially at time of release (they released like 1 week later). So yeah. And lets not forget his cohort in crime Lord British who also had a habit of releasing games that required the latest and greatest. When UO released it was pretty much only playable on the latest and greatest (Pentium) which was basically brand new.

Well Lord British's new game shroud of the avatar runs fine on my surface pro 1. So he seemed to step back from that. Its also a lot of fun

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It possibly worked for Crysis, but that's because it was exceptional. If it was the norm that every PC game crippled high-end PCs upon release, would that help inflate sales for all of them, certainly to the point of offsetting the costs of implementing those uber-high end features?

It didn't only work for Crysis.

FarCry (the first game) was the same way. Not able to run at max settings until years later.

The Witcher and The Witcher 2 were also the same. Graphics settings that were not possible to max out at a good framerate until 1-2 years later. Even now, The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition will make the vast majority of computer come to a crawl begging for mercy if you maxed out all graphics settings.

Up until The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red, pushed the envelopes of what a PC was capable of in a similar manner as Crytek. Now? Just limit things to what consoles can handle. Instead of focusing on PC as they have in the past and then scale down the settings to what consoles can handle (similar to mid-level PCs for the Witcher and the Witcher 2).

It's unfortunate that the console disease of not aspiring to push the limits of technology has affected yet another PC developer.

While never common, there were always developers (more than just Crytek, CDPR, CroTeam, Epic in the past, etc.) that were willing to push the limits of graphics technology in order to show what potential the future has. It's a shame that console development has basically castrated many of them and thus we get relatively more bland stuff that can run just fine on current top end hardware.

Regards,
SB

 

[Malo]

Lets not throw the rope over the bough until it's released and we're really seeing what we get on PC.

 

[homerdog]

If they already have the high quality assets made (clearly they must or those prior screenshots were great photoshops) I don't see why they wouldn't include them on the PC at high settings. Download size?

 

[Malo]

60Gb+ downloads on PC barely makes us bat an eyelid, apart from the bandwidth/limit starved of 3rd world countries like Australia. Star Citizen already announced as 100Gb+. I don't see that as an excuse.

 

[homerdog]

I don't either I'm just trying to put myself in CDP's head. Can't think of a good reason to intentionally make your game look worse on a platform that allow the user to determine IQ vs FPS.

 

[swaaye]

Maybe the different versions share assets. Think Rage or Dishonored here.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The Witcher and The Witcher 2 were also the same. Graphics settings that were not possible to max out at a good framerate until 1-2 years later. Even now, The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition will make the vast majority of computer come to a crawl begging for mercy if you maxed out all graphics settings.

Up until The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red, pushed the envelopes of what a PC was capable of in a similar manner as Crytek. Now? Just limit things to what consoles can handle. Instead of focusing on PC as they have in the past and then scale down the settings to what consoles can handle (similar to mid-level PCs for the Witcher and the Witcher 2).

I think that's quite wrong. Witcher 2 was already designed heavily with the X360 version in mind with small maps and very short draw distance and making a PC crawl with supersampling is hardly umm... hard or "pushing what a PC was capable" Witcher 2 ran great without the ubersampling. I'm sure you can make Witcher 3 run as slow as you want by cranking the resolution/supersampling.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Consoles holding PC gaming back? Pfft. Consoles makes the prospect of returns much higher than deving just for a PC title. If not for consoles, the development wouldn't warrant the level of investment needed to produce super highend visuals in a large open world game.

If not for consoles there'd be a hell of a lot more PC gamers so development budgets would likely still be just as high but there'd be a lot more focus on pushing the hardware. Not that I mind, I wouldn't feel special if everyone was a PC gamer lol.

 

[Prophecy2k]

10 years' time sounds a bit exaggerated, but does the perspective of an AAA game that will only be maxed out in 3/4 years sound that bad in the PC market?

Because to be honest, Crysis 1 certainly did bring Crytek a lot of fame and free publicity (and sales!) when it released as a game that could only be maxed out sometime in the future. "But will it play Crysis" became a longtime running meme.
Plus, the game is almost 8 years old but it still looks awesome today, and Warhead is still a part of the benchmark suites for dozens of websites, representing the pinnacle of what DX10 is capable of.

Erm... Crysis 1 didn't make money. Cevat Yerli confirmed that, and even went on to share that Crysis: Warhead was only made so that the company could leverage all the same game assets and recoup some more revenue from it. Iirc both games did only about a million or so each, and were only profitable when considering the combined investment and return for both games.

Crysis 2 and 3 were as a result much smaller narrower games in scope, both to allow for Crytek to target console specs and thus increase the potential for profitability by targeting the two much larger userbases.

If anything the Crysis franchise stands entirely counter to your point. As Crytek made three games, two multiplatform, as well as licensing an engine and software to defence companies, and yet still ended up in a near bankrupt state.

I would even say that in my opinion, adding super high res textures and assets for the very highest end PC users will if anything cause you to lose sales, as well as shallow out your sales curve. Mainly because alot of mid-range PC gamers (and even some console gamers) will simply decide not to bother buying your game because they can't run it at max settings, or wait until they upgrade their PC at a time further down the line. Both are eventualities you most certainly wouldn't want as a game publisher. In the end noone wants to feel as if the game they paid for is the super cut-down "retarded-cousin" of a game other's are paying the same to play "as it was meant o be played".

 

[dobwal]

If not for consoles there'd be a hell of a lot more PC gamers so development budgets would likely still be just as high but there'd be a lot more focus on pushing the hardware. Not that I mind, I wouldn't feel special if everyone was a PC gamer lol.

You can't naturally assume that under a hypothetical situation where consoles don't exist everybody would have just migrated to PC gaming. Thats like saying if Android or iOS didn't exist everybody would just own blackberries.

Parents weren't going to provide to their children PCs with performant gpus as readily as they did with consoles. Consoles have always been mass consumer devices with platform manufacturers willing to pour 100s of million to billions into hardware, software and marketing. They are cheap, easy to use, readily accessible and provide a level of performance your average PC can't provide. The console gaming market grew because it lacked a lot of barriers that impedes the potential of PC gaming. The lack of consoles doesn't mean that everyone would have been perfectly willing to deal with those barriers.

Even today in regions where PC gaming dominates and consoles have little traction, those markets don't usually revolve around big flashy AAA titles.

 

[pjbliverpool]

You can't naturally assume that under a hypothetical situation where consoles don't exist everybody would have just migrated to PC gaming. Thats like saying if Android or iOS didn't exist everybody would just own blackberries.

Parents weren't going to provide to their children PCs with performant gpus as readily as they did with consoles. Consoles have always been mass consumer devices with platform manufacturers willing to pour 100s of million to billions into hardware, software and marketing. They are cheap, easy to use, readily accessible and provide a level of performance your average PC can't provide. The console gaming market grew because it lacked a lot of barriers that impedes the potential of PC gaming. The lack of consoles doesn't mean that everyone would have been perfectly willing to deal with those barriers.

Even today in regions where PC gaming dominates and consoles have little traction, those markets don't usually revolve around big flashy AAA titles.

I didn't say everybody would have migrated to PC gaming, just that there would be a hell of a lot more PC gamers. And while the overall gaming market would still no doubt be smaller, with a single platform to target, games development would also be a little simpler/cheaper so between the two I still think there'd be a healthy AAA games market comparable to todays.

 

[dobwal]

I didn't say everybody would have migrated to PC gaming, just that there would be a hell of a lot more PC gamers. And while the overall gaming market would still no doubt be smaller, with a single platform to target, games development would also be a little simpler/cheaper so between the two I still think there'd be a healthy AAA games market comparable to todays.

You are still faced with this reality.

Just because someone is running some high end setup that cost 100s or 1000s of dollars to build, how exactly does that make their $50 extra special to CD Projekt RED?

It doesn't. Those type of setups are a minuscule segment of the market. Whatever extra performance those type of setups receive is probably going to be cheap and easy to implement not based on some motivation to push those type of setups hard and efficiently.

Whether consoles exist or not, high end PC setups will always be a small portion of the market and thats what ultimately dictates how much effort devs pour into Ultra settings of their titles. Most of the resources will go into the making sure that performance is solid across the board with extra attention spent on the most common setups not the most expensive.