ATI Gaming Evolved devrel program
- Thread starter hoom
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Most developer would like to add additional stuff to a PC version of a game. But they always need to ask themselves the question how much more copies will this stuff sell. Unfortunately these numbers are most times not high enough to get the additional money from the publisher.
While the PC is technical still superior the differences are not huge enough anymore to show up for the masses of players. Therefore PC gaming focus on the last unique points that the platform has. MMOs, browser games and to some degree RTS (you can’t play RTS very well with a pad).
IHVs cannot do that much either. They can sponsor projects buts in the end they will have the same problem. The need to answer the question how much more hardware a game would sell. It doesn’t make sense from their point to invest more money than they could get back.
I agree. Cue, IHVs footing the bill. This isn't a new idea, Intel, AMD and nVIDIA did it with CoD map-packs, FarCry's 64-bit patch, etc.
And why is that? Is it perhaps because no PC games push the envelope thus players stop upgrading as often (and as hard)? Seems like a vicious circle. Epic once complained Intel IGPs were dominant, what did they do? Release a console port 12 months later with some features removed.
That's what was said of FPS. It only took one game with a polished, but established, control scheme and now most FPS are played with a controller. Aside from RTS none of the above push the hw which only compounds the underlying problem.
Well, as karlotta mentioned, if they only look as far as next quarter then I agree with you, the ROI is not sufficient. However, if this trend of not upgrading hw because there aren't any games that push it continues, IHVs are going to find their core market becoming a niche. Then what will they use to support themselves? The razor-thin margins of console GPUs?
Coming back to Rys' point that it shouldn't all be on top of IHVs: sure, Logitech, Razor, etc. want to continue selling mice and keyboards should jump in but AMD/NVIDIA/(Intel) produce the single most expensive piece of hardware inside a PC. They're the ones most interested in seeing this business model continue. They have established relations with ISVs and they can get at the heart to the problem: not pushing graphics.
Halo has a reasonable control scheme, but it's pretty well known that keyboard + mouse is way more effective (there were some early studies about PC vs. console Halo, and they came to the conclusion that console players would get slaughtered).
There's a simple way to test this hypothesis:
How many AAA fps games are being targeted at consoles vs. PC vs. both?
How many FPS games are sold (not included for free) on consoles today vs. PCs?
IGPs will be around too, and they can earn money. Plus high-end professional graphics.
Frankly, the market for high-end gaming cards is pretty miniscule anyway...
Yes, but the reality is that consoles are very attractive for developers and it would really take the collective action of all relevant IHVs (and MS co-operation) to come up with something quite as attractive. Seems unlikely...especially since MS is sort of promoting a certain console.
David
Well the money from Publishers (boo hiss) is what makes a "Dev" attracted to Consoles,And "real" devs are just gamers who want to make a PC game, the other "Devs" are just paid hacks who want a new car... UBI EA Activision ect are all lame Pubs who can only see $ no matter the quality of game, and some of "us" think thats just fine; "markets" and all, but as has been seen in all things "entertainment"(movies music, and now games) its the lowest common denominator that wins the Pubs hearts. PC gaming is niche, will become even more niche. There is no rescue plan, only sharks from Biz school in middle management positions managing nerd game coders/devs into total blandness. But hey we have Phyx and Batman, and many more quality PC gamesss....pifft
Silent_Buddha
Legend
???
Hate the pubs all you want but without them the vast majority of AAA games won't get made. There aren't many developers who can self fund multi-million dollar projects.
Speaking of which, noone wants to work for charity when you have no other source of income.
You want to get pubs to stop thinking about ROI, then find devs willing to work for free. Find utility companies that are willing to provide electricity for free. Etc.
Even Valve releasing Alien Swarm (not a AAA title BTW) for free recently was about making money through using it for marketing and advertising.
Someday when absolutely nobody in the world wants to make money (grocery store clerk, janitor, doctor, whatever) then come back and complain about how pubs try to stay in business.
Regards,
SB
Hate the pubs all you want but without them the vast majority of AAA games won't get made. There aren't many developers who can self fund multi-million dollar projects.
Speaking of which, noone wants to work for charity when you have no other source of income.
You want to get pubs to stop thinking about ROI, then find devs willing to work for free. Find utility companies that are willing to provide electricity for free. Etc.
Even Valve releasing Alien Swarm (not a AAA title BTW) for free recently was about making money through using it for marketing and advertising.
Someday when absolutely nobody in the world wants to make money (grocery store clerk, janitor, doctor, whatever) then come back and complain about how pubs try to stay in business.
Regards,
SB
Be a good sport and just laugh. The clip deserves that, it's pretty amusing. Both IHVs have their own properly trained PR people to assert what the other is doing, and "educate" the masses about whatever foul thing the other guys are doing, I doubt they need PRs by proxy - so don't be one.
and how did publishers get all that money ? from games sales and if they didnt exist then the dev would have that money
I think this line of thinking mostly misses the point. For me it's not really about console ports or adding extras to PC games or making use of the different input methods available on a PC. Those are all secondary to actually getting the game up and running so I can play it in the first place.
On a console I put the disc or cart in. Sometimes the game might have to install some stuff on the console's HDD in this generation (or I might choose to do that myself on the 360), but that's effectively the interaction expected of the human being before he or she gets to the main menu and can start the gaming experience.
I don't have to configure a resolution and graphical settings or make sure my drivers are up to date. I don't have to worry about programs I have running in the background that might interrupt the game or consume resources I need for the game. Crashes or hangs are many orders of magnitude more frequent on the PC. If the game does crash or hang, a reset of the console doesn't leave it in an unpredictable state. If I want to get back to the console to change game or perform some other task it's capable of, the controls to do so are consistent and work regardless of game.
Granted, some things are still a pain when using the console, like opening network ports, but in general that's something I do per-console, not per-game.
The B3D crowd are smart and know how to get around PC foibles (and might even enjoy it in some perverse way), but there are still a significant number of threads here about Crossfire profiles or getting AA to work or some other configuration or system-level thing that console gamers never devote brain cycles to.
It's that quality of experience that's alluring on the console, and which is so very very far away on the PC. It's that which I mention ATI and NV can't solve alone, and that would require the work of Khronos, Microsoft, Apple et al to fix. Until I can guarantee that, for every game, all I have to do is put the disc in and wait a bit for the menu to show up, it'll just be a worse place to play games. That's before any enjoyment of higher graphical fidelity or input systems or what have you.
That's what needs fixing.
On a console I put the disc or cart in. Sometimes the game might have to install some stuff on the console's HDD in this generation (or I might choose to do that myself on the 360), but that's effectively the interaction expected of the human being before he or she gets to the main menu and can start the gaming experience.
I don't have to configure a resolution and graphical settings or make sure my drivers are up to date. I don't have to worry about programs I have running in the background that might interrupt the game or consume resources I need for the game. Crashes or hangs are many orders of magnitude more frequent on the PC. If the game does crash or hang, a reset of the console doesn't leave it in an unpredictable state. If I want to get back to the console to change game or perform some other task it's capable of, the controls to do so are consistent and work regardless of game.
Granted, some things are still a pain when using the console, like opening network ports, but in general that's something I do per-console, not per-game.
The B3D crowd are smart and know how to get around PC foibles (and might even enjoy it in some perverse way), but there are still a significant number of threads here about Crossfire profiles or getting AA to work or some other configuration or system-level thing that console gamers never devote brain cycles to.
It's that quality of experience that's alluring on the console, and which is so very very far away on the PC. It's that which I mention ATI and NV can't solve alone, and that would require the work of Khronos, Microsoft, Apple et al to fix. Until I can guarantee that, for every game, all I have to do is put the disc in and wait a bit for the menu to show up, it'll just be a worse place to play games. That's before any enjoyment of higher graphical fidelity or input systems or what have you.
That's what needs fixing.
Agreed but in recent years the gap has closed both due to PC stuff getting better and console stuff getting worse :S
In particular, here's my experience on PC for most stuff:
- Two clicks to purchase game on Steam... in a half hour or so it's *ready to play*
- Double-click to run any game whenever I want... never have to worry about keeping track of anything because I can always re-download it. Saves and user data increasingly stored in the cloud.
- Sometimes tweak some settings but most of the time it detects my hardware and defaults to all high which is fine
- Use mouse+KB or 360 controller as appropriate. Can even mix in the same game (Just Cause 2 has a great implementation of this for instance).
- Use monitor or TV/receiver as appropriate.
Whereas nowadays on console:
- Go to the store and try to the find the game. Increasingly difficult for popular games around release dates.
- Once I find it, buy it for a good $20 more than the PC version and bring it home. Overall, I've already spent more time than just buying and downloading it on Steam or equivalent.
- Power on console... mandatory system update. A least a good 1/2 hour for those.
- Insert game disk... need to install. For PS3 games lucky if this is done in another 1/2 hour.
- Now every time I play the game there may be a mandatory game update that wastes another good 15 minutes of my time (each time) and unlike Steam which gets updates for all my games in the background, the consoles always position these things to precisely waste the time that I want to use for actual gaming.
- Have to use a controller even where mouse+KB is more appropriate.
- Stuck with sub-720p graphics.
Now don't get me wrong I game on pretty much all platforms other than the Wii, but if a game is multi-platform and has a reasonable PC implementation, and is on Steam, I vastly prefer to play it there for the above reasons. I get very few crashes but admittedly I keep quite up-to-date PC hardware.
Sure but this is all optional stuff... you can just as well accept the fact that Batman doesn't have AA and just play it like everyone else on the consoles who don't have AA either and are running it in a resolution so low that it's a big issue
You can definitely elect to not tweak this stuff and just play the games "out of the box" and still be happy. I don't mess with any of this stuff nowadays and I'm a graphics geek!I'm not saying that PC can't be improved and I'm definitely not saying that the console experience can't be improved. All I'm saying is that they are a lot less far than they used to be and Steam has changed things to the point that I prefer the PC experience as it honestly wastes less of my time and makes me happier and less frustrated
thats my experience with steam
decide I fancy a quick blast of team fortress 2
run steam
game updating 5% done
think sod it shut down steam play something else
That's why I always play with Steam in offline mode. Much less annoying. 
Any reason you don't just leave steam running? That's precisely the reason *to* do this! The runtime resource requirements of steam are pretty minimal... indeed its mostly startup costs which is another reason to just let it run. Again I have a fairly high-end computer but even on my laptop(s) it doesn't have any real noticeable background effect. Certainly anyone who runs a virus scanner can't complain
This is a bit off-topic though... the point is that it certainly can be set up (and is in its default config) to update your games in the background. Current consoles cannot (although I hear if I pay money on the PS3 I may get this "privilege" now with their premium account... lame). Game updates are frequent especially for multiplayer games so background updates are highly preferable and Steam is by-far the best platform I know for this currently.
They're definitely a lot bigger, slower and more frequent than on 360. That said there's no reason for either of them to late-bind of doing these updates in the foreground when they know which games I've played/own... sloppy!
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Oh, I completely agree with you on that. Maybe it's a feature the major fall update for XB360 will bring.
It's a feature the next-gen consoles must have. Of course the behavior should be use-selectable at the two different levels, if not offering finer controls for games.
* automatic background system updates (enable/disable)
* automatic background installed game updates (enable/disable)
It's a feature the next-gen consoles must have. Of course the behavior should be use-selectable at the two different levels, if not offering finer controls for games.
* automatic background system updates (enable/disable)
* automatic background installed game updates (enable/disable)
