Question about Microsoft's PC Xbox 360 strategy

[London Geezer]

Great, great post, zeckensack! Big rep to you. Crap username though

 

[fearsomepirate]

You see, that's what happens if you go out of your way to encourage the industry to move towards multiplatform madness. On all receiving ends the games get worse, and at the same time they also get more similar. Strengths of one platform are ignored. Weaknesses of another platform become "inherent design limitations" for all platforms.

You sound kinda like me complaining about cross-platform games that were just on consoles. I really don't have much to add to this other than it is disappointing to see console gaming kill some great PC franchises. Deus Ex was the first major casualty IIRC. I definitely prefer console gaming for convenience, cost, and library reasons, but that doesn't mean I want to see titles that are indisputably great precisely because they are designed around the PC just come to an end.

The Western RPG revolved around a point-and-click mouse interface, high screen resolutions for displaying copious amounts of textual data, and large hard drives to store ridiculous amounts of player data. It's all but dead today. What's the point of buying an ueber graphics card when you're largely going to use it just so you can replay a handful of 2-year-old games to see the new graphics patches? EA is putting the next LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth on the Xbox 360. That either means the PC version will be retarded or the X360 version will be unplayable. Guess which one it'll be?

 

[see colon]

Summed up I think all of us would be much better off if the XBox and XBox360 had never existed. Including Microsoft.

i disagree. the original Xbox helped speed the use of programable shaders by developers, and that carried over into the PC space. it also opened the gates to a plethora of console ports to PC because of the similar architecture. there are several games i would have picked up on PS2 had they not been ported to PC (and the Xbox didn't exist). there's been a lack of real variety in the PC space for a while (everything is a FPS, RTS, or point and click adventure) and those console ports really help flesh out the PC library.

the Xbox also brought some PC games to the masses. how many console gamers had played an Elder Scrolls game before Morrowind hit the Xbox? then magicaly Oblivian breaks sales records in it's first month out. that's good for Bethesda. or would we be better off if they hadn't been making money?

 

[Hypnotik]

This does bring up the question: Other than another reason to have Windows, what value does the pc gaming market really have for Microsoft?

Gaming is one of the reasons why Linux cannot progress on the desktop side. Nearly all other windows applications have a very acceptable replacement on Linux. I don't think that pc gaming is the only reason why Windows remains dominant, but it is important enough for MS to care about it.

 

[EndR]

Gaming is one of the reasons why Linux cannot progress on the desktop side. Nearly all other windows applications have a very acceptable replacement on Linux. I don't think that pc gaming is the only reason why Windows remains dominant, but it is important enough for MS to care about it.

And they do.
MS efforts for gaming with Vista are really interesting and gaming was one of the areas that MS wanted to improve on with Vista, ease of installation and such and such..

 

[EndR]

Gaming has always been the primary driving factor for the PC industry. Without gaming, the PC would have evolved to a device with large memory and fast drives, but not to where it's now. And Microsoft are just in the process of killing it.

Oblivion is the showcase for this problem. Why play a game on a PC that is built around the limitations of the XBox360 core system? Goes crazy with its LOD system to not use memory (virtual and physical)? With a HUD designed for an SDTV and a game pad? Designed around not having a hard drive? Losing loot to storage nirvana due to save-game space constraints? A game that deprives PC owners from the usual (for the PC) free addon content, because, wait for it, XBox360 owners have to pay too, and it just can't be that the PC version is more attractive in any respect, right? They even removed the import for custom meshes into the construction set, so no, you can't roll your own free horse armor because ... the XBox360 users can't do that either. Well thanks a lot!

Again, why would you want to play it on the PC? What does the PC version offer that makes it better, over even as good as the XBox360 version? In which way does the game take good advantage of PC traits?

And I don't care how much say Microsoft might have had on the PC version of Oblivion, the results can stand on their own. It could have been a great PC game, after all it started off a great PC franchise, but it totally goes out of its way to ignore the inherent strengths of the PC and instead wastes time (runtime and user's time) to work around system limitations that don't even exist on the PC. It's a broken PC game.

You see, that's what happens if you go out of your way to encourage the industry to move towards multiplatform madness. On all receiving ends the games get worse, and at the same time they also get more similar. Strengths of one platform are ignored. Weaknesses of another platform become "inherent design limitations" for all platforms.

The first XBox was slightly different. It was almost a PC, it had a hard drive and virtual memory, it just didn't come standard with mouse and keyboard but that's been about it. It also had an x86 processor so if a programmer went ahead and wrote tightly optimized SSE code or whatever, that could be carried over to the PC.
Result: ports between XBox 1 and PC didn't necessarily have to be that bad.

I postulate that this time around PC gaming is dead for real, Microsoft stands by confused with a blood-dripping knife in hand, and as that personally pisses me off to no end I gleefully expect that Microsoft will only find out the hard way.

I further postulate that a game like the latest Tomb Raider sequel wouldn't have stood a chance to even make it to manufacturing, as a PC game, in a world where the XBox360 didn't exist. You just couldn't say "Yeah it's total crap technically, but that's because it's a port". There would be no excuse, not even a sorry one such as this. It just wouldn't fly.

Summed up I think all of us would be much better off if the XBox and XBox360 had never existed. Including Microsoft.

I'm moving my gaming needs and programming outbursts to Nintendo hardware. There just aren't enough games left on the PC that are not half-assed ports, so why should I bother? Buying games, upgrading my rig, trying to flock game technology in an almost-dead gaming landscape? And why should I care about Vista?

/rant

Firaxis says no..
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=16051

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Firaxis says no..
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=16051

You didn't need to quote all of zeckensack's post just to add that. And the linked article doesn't counter his/her points either. The fact PC still has games doesn't stop them being rubbish, compromised ports (if they are).

there are several games i would have picked up on PS2 had they not been ported to PC (and the Xbox didn't exist). there's been a lack of real variety in the PC space for a while (everything is a FPS, RTS, or point and click adventure) and those console ports really help flesh out the PC library.

So why not get a console for those games, and have the PC for it's games? The two machines are very different in what they can bring to gaming. For massive epic games, PCs have the resources available. For 'arcade' games, consoles are in a better position to deliver a smooth, arcade experience. It's this cross-pollenization that's creating products that play to neither systems strengths that's the issue. We have consoles with retarded framerates instead of focussing on keeping games silky-smooth, and we've PC games with retarded gameplay that don't take advantage of greater RAM, fast mass storage, and worry about how things will look on SDTVs. It's as though the industry has taken a highly scented but weakly growing rose, and a tough and harder, strong rose with no scent, and combined them to produce a weakly growing rose without a scent! The reluctance of developers to invest in particular systems has meant we're not getting the best from those systems.

 

[GB123]

This thread makes me laugh, everyone blames MS here, but it's not up to MS if a dev want to port a PC title to the 360.

Forthe 360 to be sucessful and with lack of Japanese support they need PC port's, if you image over the last 5 months if the 360 didn't have ported content the game line up would be looking pretty sad.

Many PC ports on the 360 are nothing more than fillers for when the exclusives start to hit later on in the year.

It's not really MS's fault that PC gaming is becoming more expensive than ever, and it's this reason alone why more people prefer to game on consoles, it's to be expected for developers to want cash in on this..

 

[Rolf N]

i disagree. the original Xbox helped speed the use of programable shaders by developers, and that carried over into the PC space.

Yes, we all remember the great era of water shaders. Like Morrowind. Or Halo. Both games were targetted at the PC from the get-go, until Microsoft scratched their heads and the XBox fell out.

The time was right for shaders. The bickering was IMO due to inconsistent functionality ATI vs NVIDIA and the desire for backwards compatibility. Both issues would have resolved themselves, even without the XBox IMO. Games have eventually embraced PS2.0, without a matching XBox after all, so I don't believe it was so necessary to have the XBox for PS1.1/1.3/whatever adoption.

it also opened the gates to a plethora of console ports to PC because of the similar architecture. there are several games i would have picked up on PS2 had they not been ported to PC (and the Xbox didn't exist). there's been a lack of real variety in the PC space for a while (everything is a FPS, RTS, or point and click adventure) and those console ports really help flesh out the PC library.

I'm not denying it brought a lot of games. What I'm saying is that it brought a lot of half-assed multiplatform crap.

Like, oh great, I can play Yager on the PC. Did you try? (I won't spoil the experience)
Or, again, Halo. Haha. Halo! On the PC even!

If I really want to play PS2 games I can buy a PS2. It's not that expensive, and I'm not just talking about the current year.
OTOH if I want to play PC genres, I can decide between an XBox or a PC. Great. I might have sub-par controls or other idiosyncrasies.
And you can't really convince me that the handful of XBox games that were proper console games to begin with wouldn't have been made at all. Games don't just pop into existance because there is a "new empty market" or something. People make them because that's what they want to do in life, and if they aren't occupied with an XBox project they're going to do something else with their time.

the Xbox also brought some PC games to the masses. how many console gamers had played an Elder Scrolls game before Morrowind hit the Xbox?

It's a game concept that doesn't work on a console. It works on a PC because it was designed for the PC and it somewhat worked on the XBox because it was very similar to the PC in so many ways (basically: drop mouse, take gamepad).

So perhaps you're trying to tell me that people who badly wanted a western RPG bought the XBox to play Morrowind on it? Sorry, these people should have chosen the PC version because it offered a so vastly improved experience, it's not even funny.

Oblivion is a whole new story though ... worse.

then magicaly Oblivian breaks sales records in it's first month out. that's good for Bethesda.

They would have sold extremely well anyway. They wouldn't have sold XBox360 units obviously, but they would have sold more PC units if the XBox360 wouldn't exist, because
Group #1:
There are actually people in this world who were looking forward to this game for a long time. Previews have been running in print for 2+ years, and of course it is the sequel to Morrowind, which was a pretty big success.
They would have incrementally sold even more because if they were making a proper PC game in the first place, they would have a more attractive product now (higher mag ratings, less people on message boards who are pissed off and talking about it, etc).

I'm not saying it evens out, or that it would be even more. I'm just saying that you should not subtract "All sales - 360 sales=PC sales". That's too naive.

Group #2:
Or some subset of the people who are bored with Geometry Wars and PGR3 online by now, but can't stand having spent 300+ bucks on a metal-plastic thing in their living room without actually using it. Would these people have bought Oblivion, under the terms of not actually looking forward to Oblivion (that's #1), if the XBox360 didn't exist? Perhaps they would have been bored with PC games, or with their Sega console. Who knows.

Group #3:
People who didn't wish to spend the cash to upgrade their 'puter to handle the game and thought the XBox360 was better value for the money.

These people have a nice and rational motivation there. And nevertheless they greatly add to the overall phenomenon I was trying to describe in the first place: the PC gaming ecosystem is diminishing. If people don't have PC hardware that's fit for games, PC games can not be sold.

or would we be better off if they hadn't been making money?

Bethesda is fine either way. Not that it would affect me much right now whether they're fine or bankrupt. In fact consumers might even selfishly be better off if they had busted their balls on Oblivion, because then their software would go to the bargain bin much faster.

I like their work, their rule set, their art style, so I actually wish them good fortunes, but I just hate it that Oblivion has become what it has become just because Microsoft insists to have a console on a market that's already well covered without them.

 

[Rolf N]

Firaxis says no..
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=16051

That's pretty sad.

"The PC provides this really excellent way to have a broad range," he explained. "If you're going to have the game equivalent of an independent film company, that self publishes and all of that stuff, they're not going to do it on console - they're going to do it on PC."

So the PC is going to be kept alive by, what do they call it everywhere else, homebrew? Ask N-Gage, Gizmondo and Gamepark owners how well that works.

Caudill also emphasised the fact that PC hardware will rapidly outstrip the next-gen systems in price / performance terms over the coming years

What is he basing this on? Because people "traditionally" always upgrade their PCs to keep up with the latest games? What games are there anymore to justify this? How tf can he just assume that everyone's going to keep their rigs top notch?
It's pretty likely that if you weren't interested in FEAR, you didn't upgrade your PC last year. What else has there been?

I know there are shitloads of people who stopped upgrading their PC for games because it is so expensive, while at the same time there tends to be roughly zero justification for picking the PC version of a multi-platform game anymore. So there. Oblivion yadda yadda. King Kong.

 

[Rolf N]

This thread makes me laugh, everyone blames MS here, but it's not up to MS if a dev want to port a PC title to the 360.

MS absolutely have encouraged ports, and their encouragement certainly inspired many of the games industry bean counters that porting is so easy and cheap that it must be done.

For the original XBox, Microsoft selected an x86 processor, an IDE hard drive, a Windowsish OS kernel, an NVIDIA graphics solution and a DirectXish hardware abstraction layer ... for what reasons exactly? I'll tell you, to make it as easy as possible to port things between the XBox and the PC, and to lure PC developers onto their platform.
I really don't think that this is all just a huge coincidence. They certainly had the means to compile code for platforms other than the "Wintel"-PC, as can be seen when looking at their old (PowerPC) Mac software products, or now at the XBox360.

And now you'll notice that the XBox360 is not all that similar to a Windows PC in terms of hardware. It's more like a supercharged GameCube. From a hardware pov porting between this and the PC became much harder. Well, Microsoft to the rescue again! It's called "XNA", it's some sort of development program, and even though nobody knows exactly what it is, it's supposed to make porting cheap, easy and fun for everyone!

Forthe 360 to be sucessful and with lack of Japanese support they need PC port's, if you image over the last 5 months if the 360 didn't have ported content the game line up would be looking pretty sad.

Many PC ports on the 360 are nothing more than fillers for when the exclusives start to hit later on in the year.

If you were asking for the most blunt variation of my opinion, there shouldn't be any games for the XBox360, not now and not next year. Developers should spend their time elsewhere and let Microsoft hammer the train firmly into the ground.

It's not really MS's fault that PC gaming is becoming more expensive than ever, and it's this reason alone why more people prefer to game on consoles, it's to be expected for developers to want cash in on this..

I don't wish to blame individual developers. The reality of developing software is of course not seperable from financial issues, so you naturally want to cover wide markets, be cost-effective and stuff.

It's the overall effect that matters to me. An XBox exclusive will not be a PC game, and an XBox360=>PC-port is very unlikely to be a great PC game, so overall PC gaming weakens.

There are also some ports that are so absymal technically that you just have to wonder how they would perform if they were developed directly for the PC. If, say, Halo/PC had run at twice the framerate as it actually did, and I don't think that's asking too much for what it throws onto the screen, fewer people would have needed to upgrade their PCs.

I pity anyone who upgrades their gaming PCs for the current Tomb Raider game or for King Kong or whatever. That is money directly lost to the "efficiencies" of multi-platform development.

 

[heliosphere]

I'm moving my gaming needs and programming outbursts to Nintendo hardware. There just aren't enough games left on the PC that are not half-assed ports, so why should I bother? Buying games, upgrading my rig, trying to flock game technology in an almost-dead gaming landscape? And why should I care about Vista?

/rant

You're moving to Nintendo because there aren't enough games on the PC? Hmm.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For the original XBox, Microsoft selected an x86 processor, an IDE hard drive, a Windowsish OS kernel, an NVIDIA graphics solution and a DirectXish hardware abstraction layer ... for what reasons exactly? I'll tell you, to make it as easy as possible to port things between the XBox and the PC, and to lure PC developers onto their platform.

I disagree with that. I think MS chose PC-like hardware because they wanted something quick after no other console was to sport their OS. They already had DirectX development, so throwing out costly PC hardware and integrating your existing development was a quick solution to build some sort of console presence to stop Sony running away with a clear market. If Xbox was to be PC like for developer friendliness, why not incorporate VM and allow the HD to be used more effectively, sharing a key component of PC software?

And now you'll notice that the XBox360 is not all that similar to a Windows PC in terms of hardware. It's more like a supercharged GameCube. From a hardware pov porting between this and the PC became much harder. Well, Microsoft to the rescue again! It's called "XNA", it's some sort of development program, and even though nobody knows exactly what it is, it's supposed to make porting cheap, easy and fun for everyone!

Doesn't that rather counter your argument? If MS are so stuck on having their XB hardware likek a PC, why give it such wierd un-PC-like hardware? Why not go for an x86 OOO mono-core CPU? They could keep the US GPU and DirectX interface, but the loss of x86 OOO processing throws a mammoth spanner in the works for cross-platform, creating a system that makes for weak cross-patform titles. If MS are planning for cross-platform friendliness, they'd have made a mammothly stupid mistake mussing up the key component, the CPU.

XNA is more a side-effect of MS's software development tools than a targetted cross-platform system. They're not going to develop a totally different toolchain for their console when much of the PC tool chain can be preserved.

The fact cross-platform titles are weak can be attributed more likely to MS not planning for it despite developers going ahead with it. MS are supporting two alien hardware platforms vying for the same gamers, and software developers trying to appeal to the gamer market as a whole need to support both hardware platforms. They can't focus development on either without harming development of the other different system, and they can't afford to develop specialised code for both.

Perhaps ideally MS should have gone with a cheap gaming-spec'd PC, an x86 (probably Athlon 64) processor and GPU (Xenos would be okay) and full HDD. which would have supportedcross-platform far more effectively making for stronger PC and console software on the whole. A gaming-focussed console has the capacity for greater gaming per dollar but only if the software is written for it, which MS can't secure apart from a few exclusives. With a more PC centric platform they could have divided developers into PC-based and ecletic, complicated Console based, elliminating much of the negative impact from PC<>XB cross platform titles.

 

[Sis]

So perhaps you're trying to tell me that people who badly wanted a western RPG bought the XBox to play Morrowind on it? Sorry, these people should have chosen the PC version because it offered a so vastly improved experience, it's not even funny.

This is such a myopic view, I'm not even sure where to start.

Many people buy consoles to play video games so it should come as no surprise that many of these same people, if given a choice, will choose a game even though there's a PC counterpart. Many people don't like playing games on a PC, don't want to spend the effort in configuring it, installing it, troubleshooting it, etc. As well, the PC to console price difference is such that suggesting "these people should have choosen the PC version" is mildly laughable, if you didn't seem so emotionally tied to it.

Similarly I find it odd, to say the least, that you picked one of the better selling games on both the PC and the Xbox as an example of something being bad. Apparently many people found it "good", including the publisher and developer.

 

[heliosphere]

Similarly I find it odd, to say the least, that you picked one of the better selling games on both the PC and the Xbox as an example of something being bad. Apparently many people found it "good", including the publisher and developer.

This is a good point. Oblivion has also been used to argue against PC / Xbox 360 cross platform development and yet it is currently the highest rated 360 game (94 on metacritic on 360) and in the top 10 highest rated PC games (another 94 on metacritic on the PC). It's already being talked about as game of the year for the PC. It's topping sales charts on both platforms and is an unqualified commercial success already. There have been a few criticisms regarding the 'consoleified' interface on the PC but in the light of the overall almost universal acclaim for the game that seems like a fairly minor issue. On the flipside, it seems likely that the game may well be better as a result of more resources being committed to it on the expectation of higher returns due to a larger market across two platforms.

Developers rarely make platform choices for any other reason than an expectation of making more money - there's some cost involved in writing a cross-platform title but when developers decide to go cross-platform it's because they expect to make more by having a larger market than they expect to spend doing cross platform development. If it was really true that you could always make more money focusing on a single platform wouldn't we see the majority of titles being single platform?

 

[scooby_dooby]

Group #1:
There are actually people in this world who were looking forward to this game for a long time. Previews have been running in print for 2+ years, and of course it is the sequel to Morrowind, which was a pretty big success.
They would have incrementally sold even more because if they were making a proper PC game in the first place, they would have a more attractive product now (higher mag ratings, less people on message boards who are pissed off and talking about it, etc).

I'm not saying it evens out, or that it would be even more. I'm just saying that you should not subtract "All sales - 360 sales=PC sales". That's too naive.

Group #2:
Or some subset of the people who are bored with Geometry Wars and PGR3 online by now, but can't stand having spent 300+ bucks on a metal-plastic thing in their living room without actually using it. Would these people have bought Oblivion, under the terms of not actually looking forward to Oblivion (that's #1), if the XBox360 didn't exist? Perhaps they would have been bored with PC games, or with their Sega console. Who knows.

Group #3:
People who didn't wish to spend the cash to upgrade their 'puter to handle the game and thought the XBox360 was better value for the money..

Group 4: People who simply can't stand extended gaming session on their PC sitting in an uncomfortable chair hunched over a keyboard, and vastly prefer the experience on a couch, with a big screen TV and using their pre-existing sourround sound set-up.

AKA: The majority of people.

 

[Rolf N]

You're moving to Nintendo because there aren't enough games on the PC? Hmm.

There are less games, but I found the ones I played to be quite nice experiences. I played lots of exclusives, and I realize that I like exclusives. There aren't any of the strange and painful compromises typical for multi-platform titles in games like Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Tales Of Symphonia, Resident Evil 4 (it was exclusive for a while) and Zero, Superstar Saga, Metroid Fusion, Mario Kart DS, Advance Wars. They all just work, they take full advantage of their target systems and that doesn't just mean fps, but also control schemes and loading times.

Many of the PC games I played over the last year have made compromises in controls, menu layouts etc.
Off the top of my head, I have played exactly two PC exclusive games in 2005, and they were UFO: Aftershock and Etherlords 2. Obviously I like turn-based strategy games. And I like it when they take opportunity of the mouse I have zipping around on my desk.

FEAR didn't interest me and neither did the new Age Of Empires title, so that was pretty much all the "life" that PC gaming had for me. Everything else was a port, and that's borrowed life which doesn't count IMO.

Interesting things will happen on the Nintendo handhelds soon, but if I throw up a link it would be considered commercial spam

 

[Geo]

Should turn the licensing around on those guys --IP is IP. It shouldn't matter in the least. Buy once, run everywhere.

 

[scooby_dooby]

an XBox360=>PC-port is very unlikely to be a great PC game, so overall PC gaming weakens.

Meanwhile Oblivion is the 2nd highest rated PC RPG in the last 7 years on gamerankings.com.

You're point is totally out of touch with reality, the reality is Oblivion is one of the greatest games to grace PC's in years. Regardless of whether it is also available on 360. So if anything, this is a sign that 360 ports do NOT negatively affect the quality of the PC game, not the other way around.

 

[Rolf N]

I disagree with that. I think MS chose PC-like hardware because they wanted something quick after no other console was to sport their OS. They already had DirectX development, so throwing out costly PC hardware and integrating your existing development was a quick solution to build some sort of console presence to stop Sony running away with a clear market. If Xbox was to be PC like for developer friendliness, why not incorporate VM and allow the HD to be used more effectively, sharing a key component of PC software?

And I thought it had virtual memory?
They didn't actually strip protected mode and exception handling out of the processor, did they?

Doesn't that rather counter your argument? If MS are so stuck on having their XB hardware likek a PC, why give it such wierd un-PC-like hardware? Why not go for an x86 OOO mono-core CPU? They could keep the US GPU and DirectX interface, but the loss of x86 OOO processing throws a mammoth spanner in the works for cross-platform, creating a system that makes for weak cross-patform titles. If MS are planning for cross-platform friendliness, they'd have made a mammothly stupid mistake mussing up the key component, the CPU.

Manufacturing costs.
Of course Microsoft knows that this makes porting harder, and they did something to offset this "alien" hardware environment because they want to have a platform that is friendly to ports.

XNA is more a side-effect of MS's software development tools than a targetted cross-platform system. They're not going to develop a totally different toolchain for their console when much of the PC tool chain can be preserved.

It's not an "accident" at all IMO.

The XNA Framework is an exciting new development and execution environment which will allow game developers to more easily create games which run on the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms. It is being designed with a unified set of class libraries which will allow for maximal re-use of code and assets across target platforms.