I have covered the other scenario of not playing the same disk as well.
What you describe is a scenario where consoles do not exist
Console Exclusives: Are you for or against them & why?
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What you describe is a scenario where consoles do not exist
This is a completely baseless assertion. It's not as if all the people who enjoy such games would suddenly disappear from the Earth overnight if consoles ceased to exist. Those people would still be here and they'd still be wanting the same gaming experiences. There's absolutely zero reason to expect publishers wouldn't deliver on that demand.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that no-one aside from a very small niche is interested in playing those types of games on the PC but I've no idea where you're getting that idea. Even today, in a world were consoles do exist and clearly take a large portion of that audience, the PC regularly outsells the Xbox One in the big budget single player games:
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/repor...games-sell-better-on-the-pc-than-on-xbox-one/
But the XBO is still able to justify it's existence as a top tier platform for AAA single player experiences. Now imagine if the PC market was 3x bigger than it is today in a world where gamers have no option to buy a console.
Blatantly yes, I can't imagine why you would think otherwise. The Witcher 1 was a PC exclusive, the Witcher 2 was initially a PC exclusive that was ported to consoles, the Witcher 3 is a true cross platform game - not a console game that got some second rate PC port. If all the gaming market (okay let's be generous and say half of todays total gaming market) were all resident on a single platform (the PC) then that market would be far bigger than any single platform that we have today and would easily be able to support games like the Witcher 3 which actually had quite a modest budget. Baring in mind development costs would be lower with only a single platform to target, plus per sale profits are higher on the PC. Given that games like Uncharted and TLOU are financially viable with a target market as small as the PS3's, I hardly think they would be an issue with a target market at least twice that size in a hypothetical world where there is only one games platform to choose from.
I don't agree with that. There will always be publishers that want to differentiate themselves from the rest by producing higher end games and there's quite clearly a market there to support them. We'd probably see games built with more innate scaling though. Even today a decent IGP can play current gen consoles games with reduced details and resolution so that serves as a pretty decent baseline and still numbers in the 10's of millions (at least). And that's in a world were consoles exist. In a world where they don't, discreet gaming setups would be far more prevalent. And an interesting side benefit of that would likely be increased competition and R&D in the discrete market meaning graphics tech would be progressing faster than it is today.
Sigh, let's do this again. You present numbers, which include:
- Bundled games with GPUs
- Lower price (sometimes as much as 1/3) sales from gray market key re-sellers
In what way do you think that quote is talking about a hypothetical world where consoles don't exist and there is a correspondingly much larger PC market? It quite obviously isn't.
It's saying that in today's PC market - the one were consoles also exist - they couldn't afford a game of that scope without also targeting consoles. That in no way supports your argument that if consoles didn't exist (and thus there is a much larger PC market) they would still be unable to produce the Witcher 3. There is simply no basis for making such an argument.
It might be possible to work out a break even point for the number of sales required in a PC only world to justify the production of the Witcher 3 it you had detailed information about the games production and marketing costs and how they would scale down with only having to target a single platform + the average profit to the publisher per PC game sale. Using that number you could then at least make an argument that the larger PC market would or would not be able to achieve that number of sales based on the number of sales the current PC market achieved (about 1/3 of total sales).
But so far I haven't even seen educated guesses at those numbers.
If the console choice did not exist, less people would play. It is a question of price and convenience...
I don't think this is a fact. Korea and China and many other countries may have banned or never had access to any consoles for a long time and their gaming on PC are magnitudes larger than NA. They have yet to really adopt console.
They are big on esports the past few decades (mobas, mmos, starcraft). Not single player games or indies. Like i said, the problem isn't if PC would exist without consoles but what types of games we would play if that happened.
That's not entirely true. Japan for instance has a massive PC base (an area where console sales are declining) and many of those games don't make it to console either.
I'm not purposely trying to cherry pick, but there is a large difference from (less players because no consoles, the argument I'm trying to address) to game controls dictate what type of games are being played.
Why do you think they wouldn't?
It's a no brainer IMO that some gamers who today game only on consoles would be PC gamers if those consoles didn't exist. Hell, many of todays consoles gamers were once PC gamers that were drawn away from the PC market by consoles.
No-ones trying to say that every single one of todays consoles gamers would instead be a PC gamer in a world were consoles had never existed but it's pretty obvious (to me at least) that a lot of them would be.
The question is, would that larger PC market be large enough to sustain the production of moderns AAA games - accounting for the reduced development costs of targeting only a single platform and the lack of requirement to pay royalties to console manufacturers.
I maintain that it likely would, you maintain that it likely (or perhaps you're saying definitely) wouldn't. Truth is neither of us have any solid evidence of this either way so how about we just leave it there.
And in a market were PC is the only platform and thus demand for PC gaming hardware is much higher, it's likely hardware costs would be lower (because R&D costs can be spread over greater sales). Add to that people would generally upgrade PC's rather than purchase new systems outright (as per the current model for long term PC gamers) and PC games are generally a lot cheaper and it's entirely possible for the cost to be comparable to console gaming.
And while I don't disagree that the price/convenience argument is something in favour of a larger gaming market, there's also an argument to be made about the incentive to join a larger unified gaming community. Today a non gamer may have some friends with PS4's, some with PS3's, some with XB360's or XBO's or WiiU's or PC's etc.... The gaming community is split lots of different ways and thus the incentive to become a member of that community is smaller than in our hypothetical example where literally every one of your gaming friends is part of the same single community. That could in fact drive more people to become gamers.
The bottom line here is that you can come up with arguments all day long about why the AAA market (including the AAA games that are today platform exclusive) may no longer exist in a single platform world and I can make counter arguments as to why they would. But neither of us have any evidence on this and the truth is that both scenario's are probably possible.
So since this basically just boils down to opinion, we should agree to disagree, on the proviso that everyone stops presenting their opinion as if it's an immutable fact.
And yet again, you don't provide anything to back your claims. You claim that if consoles didn't exist PC would be much bigger. Even if that was the case where is the indication that the main three problems publishers have with PC would be solved? None. Where is the indication that publishers would prefer to publish single player games over multiplayer games? Would the core player base change games preference if consoles didn't exist? I find it more plausible that gamers would shift to mobile gaming instead of PC, like they already do in Japan. PC gaming isn't as convenient for everyone as it is for you and me.
Accusing me of not providing any evidence to back up my claims is a bit rich when you are also making claims that are equally unsuported but expecting me to either accept them, or counter them with evidence. I'll refer you once again to my previous post:
I back my opinion with numbers, sales, pros and cons. I explain why PC isn't as big right now in the single player market. Please explain how piracy on PC, grey area key re-sellers and core playerbase playing multiplayer games and not buying full price day 1 would change if consoles didn't exist. I think it's pretty clear that these 3 problems are not correlated with the existence of consoles. Following from that it's easy to explain why PC has shifted heavily into multiplayer the last decade which is a fact as can bee seen by the number of players playing multiplayer free to play games now on PC biggest platform, Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ or you can take a look at Twitch right now: http://www.twitch.tv/
The only genre able to solve fully all three problems on PC right now is multiplayer free to play games; surprise surprise, these are the most popular/profitable games on the platform
The only genre able to solve fully all three problems on PC right now is multiplayer free to play games; surprise surprise, these are the most popular/profitable games on the platform
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None of which is relevant since publishers still release PC versions of AAA single player games today and they often sell better than the XBO version as per the link I posted above. And yet the XBO market is considered large enough to justify big budget exclusive AAA games like Quantum Break, Halo and Gears of War The fact is that despite the issues you post above, the PC is still a profitable platform for those types of games, scale the PC market up in size and it becomes correspondingly more profitable - especially if the users you're scaling it up with have a greater preference for single player games..
It doesn't matter that multiplayer and F2P games are bigger on PC than single player games - when taking those segments of the market into account, PC gaming is already as big as the entire console market. What we're talking about here is whether that segment of the market that supports single player AAA games would be large enough to sustain that market in a world without consoles, the fact that there's also a bigger market for a different type of game means nothing.
I also question the validity of using twitch and steam stats to judge the relative size of market segments since the big budget AAA titles are more often than not published on their own publishers games platforms rather than Steam (and thus wouldn't show) while Twitch is far more likely to be used to to air multiplayer matches that have more dynamic scenario's than single player games which more often play the same for everyone.
It doesn't matter that multiplayer and F2P games are bigger on PC than single player games - when taking those segments of the market into account, PC gaming is already as big as the entire console market. What we're talking about here is whether that segment of the market that supports single player AAA games would be large enough to sustain that market in a world without consoles, the fact that there's also a bigger market for a different type of game means nothing.
I also question the validity of using twitch and steam stats to judge the relative size of market segments since the big budget AAA titles are more often than not published on their own publishers games platforms rather than Steam (and thus wouldn't show) while Twitch is far more likely to be used to to air multiplayer matches that have more dynamic scenario's than single player games which more often play the same for everyone.
The PC is profitable for publishers right now because the cost of porting such games is minuscule when you take into account:
- Steam, easy to distribute games without the need for physical disc release
- Similar architecture for PC/Consoles this gen
- PC version is usually showcase for multiplatform games at E3/Gamescom
Of course it is relevant. Many PC games are what they are on PC because the console market exists. Ofcourse the XB1 will be getting its AAA big budget titles. Its the only way MS will be able to differentiate in order to maintain or increase their market share. MS needs exclusives. If they dont have exclusives they will be weakening their brand. There are millions who want an XB1 specifically for Halo or Gears. On the PC you dont have a single platform provider who is worried about market share. Only publishers worrying about the sales of their software and they feel safer on the totality of the console market
I'm one of those PC gamers who moved to consoles. In my case if consoles didn't exist I wouldn't have stayed with PC. I would have most likely have quit gaming or moved to mobile. The cost of the PC & continual upgrading necessary to play games was a big drain on the pocket book & a bit frustrating with all the necessary performance tuning of drivers, etc. I suspect that's the big allure of console gaming. If the PC didn't have that, then I don't think many of those gamers would have stayed with the PC.
Personally I think this whole discussion is a bit silly. Without consoles, game developers/publishers would find other ways to differentiate themselves from the crowd. You would probably have multiple game services where they have games only exclusive to their service or only exclusive to only one kind of CPU or graphics card(see Nvidia's developer program). You're starting to see some of that with Steam & Origin. Plus don't even get me started about store pre-order exclusives. But regardless of all that, IMHO if the PC doesn't fix their piracy issues there's no way that I can see publishers or developers spending money on big budget AAA games like they currently do on the console. Piracy was rampant when I left PC gaming & it looks like there hasn't been much change since either.
Tommy McClain
This is how I feel about this thread, just flip the topic to making all games cross platform.
I'm reading a lot of: this is how it works, it must be like this, games are like this because..., i know only these games are made now, these guys don't like that, they only like this...
But there's no real evidence being presented here. No one here has made a significant impact against Shifty's argument that an all cross platform utopia would not be better for gamers. I'm only reading it's going to be worse because X games would not be made if they were cross platform.
Realistically, businesses are always looking for a way to 'one up' their competitors and exclusive content is exactly what that is (as Dobwal writes and we all agree), but once that content is made aside from the contract there is nothing stopping that game from porting to a competitors platform. The game is 'MADE'. And that's all Shifty's argument is. You guys cannot seem to let go of what would happen if exclusives just all of a sudden went cross platform. But we see it happening more and more on the Xbox side of things. Gears of War, KI, Ryse, Dead Rising 3 and Fable Legends are now cross platform. Cuphead, Ori, Below and Inside are cross platform. And we'll see more.
MS is making the move to ensure all their peripherals and future peripherals are fully backwards compatible starting now. As much as you guys say it wouldn't work, I'm definitely seeing MS making a move towards Shifty's vision of the future, though to Dobwals point, you're buying into the platform which is Xbox (and their store), and no longer buying into the console, that is Xbox One. Essentially Steam's model done in reverse.
Nintendo IIRC is trying to move their stuff to mobile. And Sony is the only one that hasn't been changing their model. If that's the only model you want to look at, that's a big problem in progressing this discussion forward.
And to back PB&Js point, it's rubbish to suggest Sony first party games are the only good exclusives out there. And it's rubbish to suggest that PC has no single player games.
PC was built on the foundation of single player games. Please see nearly every game made from Sierra and Infrogrames, BullFrog and Maxis. Planescape Torment is returning, Pillars of Eternity is expanding, Divinity the Original Sin is great as well. There are a ton of great adventure and RPG games on PC, the concept of TPS action RPG as being the only AAA 'single' player experience is rubbish. There are tons of turn based strategy games on PC that will never see the light of day on console. Millions of mods and user created games for tons of games. You want overpriced AAA PC exclusive, look no farther than Star Citizen.
Star Control 2 is the greatest game made of all time, so suck it - and that was a PC exclusive game made available on consoles at a later time.
I'm reading a lot of: this is how it works, it must be like this, games are like this because..., i know only these games are made now, these guys don't like that, they only like this...
But there's no real evidence being presented here. No one here has made a significant impact against Shifty's argument that an all cross platform utopia would not be better for gamers. I'm only reading it's going to be worse because X games would not be made if they were cross platform.
Realistically, businesses are always looking for a way to 'one up' their competitors and exclusive content is exactly what that is (as Dobwal writes and we all agree), but once that content is made aside from the contract there is nothing stopping that game from porting to a competitors platform. The game is 'MADE'. And that's all Shifty's argument is. You guys cannot seem to let go of what would happen if exclusives just all of a sudden went cross platform. But we see it happening more and more on the Xbox side of things. Gears of War, KI, Ryse, Dead Rising 3 and Fable Legends are now cross platform. Cuphead, Ori, Below and Inside are cross platform. And we'll see more.
MS is making the move to ensure all their peripherals and future peripherals are fully backwards compatible starting now. As much as you guys say it wouldn't work, I'm definitely seeing MS making a move towards Shifty's vision of the future, though to Dobwals point, you're buying into the platform which is Xbox (and their store), and no longer buying into the console, that is Xbox One. Essentially Steam's model done in reverse.
Nintendo IIRC is trying to move their stuff to mobile. And Sony is the only one that hasn't been changing their model. If that's the only model you want to look at, that's a big problem in progressing this discussion forward.
And to back PB&Js point, it's rubbish to suggest Sony first party games are the only good exclusives out there. And it's rubbish to suggest that PC has no single player games.
PC was built on the foundation of single player games. Please see nearly every game made from Sierra and Infrogrames, BullFrog and Maxis. Planescape Torment is returning, Pillars of Eternity is expanding, Divinity the Original Sin is great as well. There are a ton of great adventure and RPG games on PC, the concept of TPS action RPG as being the only AAA 'single' player experience is rubbish. There are tons of turn based strategy games on PC that will never see the light of day on console. Millions of mods and user created games for tons of games. You want overpriced AAA PC exclusive, look no farther than Star Citizen.
Star Control 2 is the greatest game made of all time, so suck it
- and that was a PC exclusive game made available on consoles at a later time.
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1 would still be the case in a PC only market. 2. would be even more of an advantage in a PC only market (no porting costs at all, single API etc...) and 3 isn't a reason PC ports are cheap, it's a simple side effect of the fact that a PC port exists.
No matter which way you cut it, if PC sales of AAA single player games are comparable to XBO sales in todays market (which I think we've established that they are), then PC sales are going to be a damned site larger if there are no consoles on the market. Let's play with some hypothetical numbers to illustrate the point.
These are purely made up but Iets say the current ratio of sales for current gen AAA games today is as follows:
PS4: 5
XBO: 3
PC: 2
So you have a situation there where your total market adds up to 10 with the PC taking only 20%. Now in a world where consoles had never existed, how large would we expect the total AAA games market to then be? Let's estimate that only half of todays consoles gamers would still be interested in high end gaming with 1 out of 2 consoles gamers simply giving up on gaming altogether or being content with non AAA experiences on mobile. That would make the total PC market a 6, or 60% the size of todays market. But with lower development costs and higher per unit profits that could easily be enough to support modern scale AAA games development - given the fact that such development of exclusive games is already possible while targeting smaller markets. And frankly, I think I've lowballed the PC's marketshare above while overestimating the amount of console gamers that would give up on AAA games and ignoring the impact of all the gamers still using last gen consoles or the WiiU, some of which would also be on PC if consoles had never existed.
It's just an illustration but as I said earlier, unless you have some pretty solid evidence to show why any of the above is irrefutably wrong, then it's just opinion vs opinion and I'm really not interested in trying to argue down your opinion. I'm more than happy for you to have it as long as you don't try passing it off as fact.
And a reason we're seeing many more this generation.
You tell me? If 50% of the current console using public turned to piracy and another 50% chose to purchase the game legitimately then the example I gave above would still stand. Do you have data that suggests different numbers?
Where is your evidence to show that the average profit that the publisher sees per unit is lower for PC games than it is for consoles games? You cite the cheap methods of getting PC games above while completely ignoring the likes PS Now or the consoles second hand market.
So you seriously expect all the people enjoying Uncharted, TLOU, Gears of War etc... would suddenly change their preferences to Counterstrke and Dota in world without consoles? Because somehow the very existence of consoles makes people desrire these games, and without consoles that desire wouldn't exist?
Publishers don't tell the market what to play, they make what the market wants.
That is completely irrelevant to your argument. We don't see high budget PC exclusive single player games like Crysis anymore because the current PC market alone isn't big enough to support them.
Since the entire basis of the discussion that we've been having over the last few pages has been that the PC market would be much bigger without the existence of consoles then I have no idea why you even thought to bring up the point above.
But if those big budget AAA exclusives can still turn a profit while targeting only the XBO market then it stands to reason that similarly popular big budget franchises would be able to do the same in a PC only market where the total size of that market would likely be much larger than the current XBO market.
While that may have been true once, it's not really the case any more. I haven't upgraded for 4 years and my PC is still more capable than the PS4. And drivers can be set to download and install automatically the day they release via GeForce Experience, I assume something similar is possible with gaming evolved. TBH aside from shoddy ports which one can only assume would be less of an issue in a PC only market since the PC would be the first class citizen rather than an afterthought, PC gaming today is almost as seamless as console gaming.
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D
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Somebody kill this thread. It's mutated into evil and crazy. 
