PC Gaming, where are you

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

 I get the strong feeling most of what can be done on all 3 current consoles has been done. PCs used to be great at filling in this period where the games consoles were ekeing out their remaining lifespan, but the PC exclusive software market is more or less dead. This is extremely disappointing when you consider that mobile phones and handheld consoles have applications that used give PC gaming more of a unique selling point.

The early/mid-nineties and DOS gaming offered something slightly different to console gaming- without ever quite being as immediate and intuitive as the consoles around at the time. Then by the late nineties and the stagnant pre-Dreamcast console market, PC gaming shat on consoles for several consecutive years, and was looking pretty strong. Games weren't that expensive, and the price of getting something that would play new games was reasonable- graphics cards weren't quite as expensive either. I was looking at one the other day which was £250 exc VAT. I mean...pff. That's going to put most people off to start with.

So then the DC came out- had internet gaming but hardly anyone bought it. PS2 came out, but PC gaming in terms of performance was still just ahead. Then Xbox, and the delayed release of XboxLive, and that's when consoles seem to have forged ahead, encroaching on the PC's final USP- multiplayer gaming.

So what's remaining on the PC- strategy games, management games, MMORPGs, meh. I'd love it to return to the energy of the 90s where you had a great range of software that just wasn't available on the console, and did some consoley stuff even better. There's something particular in the feel of the DOS VGA/SVGA era too, that feels almost like a seperate console experience in itself.

Perhaps more of us spend time on the computer doing other serious stuff/internet stuff and associate gaming more with taking a break from that and slouching in front of the telly. Hmm.

[madhair60]

As I'm sure you know already, turning to the indie/freeware side is the way to get a unique experience, now that the PC's commercial library is essentially interchangeable with that of the 360.

Still, going back, all I ever had were Apogee/Epic platformers.  They don't make 'em like that no more, no they don't.

[Still Not George]

As I'm sure you know already, turning to the indie/freeware side is the way to get a unique experience, now that the PC's commercial library is essentially interchangeable with that of the 360.

What he said. You're never, ever going to find Minecraft or Mount & Blade on the consoles, because the market won't support them the way the PC enthusiast market can. Those and MMOs are the real heart of the PC gaming world now.

[mook]

just out of interest how much would you expect to have to pay for a pc capable of playing the top latest releases nowadays?

[chand]

Perhaps more of us spend time on the computer doing other serious stuff/internet stuff and associate gaming more with taking a break from that and slouching in front of the telly. Hmm.

This is the main reason I don't do PC gaming, I don't really like to do gaming 2ft from the screen after I spent the whole day working and internetting in the same fashion.

Also, recent PC games I have bought:
- Gears Of War: repeatedly crashed whenever it tried to autosave, because Vista won't let me have permission to save on C:\ drive it's on unless I "run as Administrator". Weeks later when I return to the game it fucks up again. Extensive Googling revealed that a flaw in the coding meant that, to cut a long story short, it would only work if you set the PC's clock back several months for the duration of gaming.
- Grim Fandango: Vista really, really doesn't like this game. Installed a free launcher that botches things to get it working. It freezes about 10 minutes into the game.
- Splinter Cell Conviction: anti-piracy measures force you to be online at all times, even while playing offline single player. If your connection drops even for a second, the game pauses, gives an error message, and won't let you resume until you're reconnected.
- Metro 2033: Steam insisted I fucking download the 7GB file of the game and wouldn't let me stop it, even though I had the fucking disc. Several hours were wasted waiting for the game to download before I could play it despite having a physical copy right there.
- Thief: Deadly Shadows. Simply refuses to even fucking boot on my PC.

Even the games I buy that do work require ludicrous amounts of verification and/or fannying about with Steam. I'd rather just buy a PS3 game that I know will work.

[madhair60]

There's a patch for Gears.  I was having problems with it to until I got Arkham Asylum.  Setting up an offline Games for Windows Live account using the Batman game, I was able to get Gears of War working perfectly.  Game's a piece of shit though.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I was going to start a thread about how I think consoles are holding back technical development, but I couldn't think how to word it. With 90% of modern commercial PC games being primarily console games, many developers aren't pushing the envelope when it comes to utilising the potentially huge power advantage PC hardware has.

I do all my gaming on PC, don't own a console other than the Wii which only really gets used when people are round. Bugs can be a problem, but I find they're not too common when the system is maintained and drivers kept up to date. Worst problem by far I've had was very recently, Dead Rising 2. It's such a buggy piece of shit I think I've one of every different possible crash or glitch on a PC. Check out the Steam forum to see how many people are having trouble. Capcom even know that Wireless Xbox360 pad doesn't work, and you have to lower your sound settings to get the game to actually work, but won't patch those problems. Cases like that show a lack of respect to the platform, but other than that, I find bugs as rare as on console counterparts, or usually patched quickly or worked around easily enough.

It pains me to see PC gaming in decline especially since it's a platform that's not given the respect and coverage it deserves. Check out ad advert on TV for the latest cross-platform game. They'll show the PS3 and XBOX covers, but there'll be no mention of PC. Why the hell aren't Microsoft pushing harder? Also lots of developers are ignoring their roots. GTA started off on PC and now Rockstar won't release Red Dead Redemption on PC. Alan Wake was originally a PC game, then became an 360 exclusive. Epic decided the PC fans who bought their Unreal games for a decade were dirty pirates so they won't release Gears of War 2 on PC. It's hardly encouraging.

I have to applaud Valve for picking up the slack, I think they've managed to give PC gaming a boost with Steam, PC gaming would probably be in a lot worse state otherwise. Plus they are even managing to give a jolt to an even more neglected platform for gaming, Macs.

This is the main reason I don't do PC gaming, I don't really like to do gaming 2ft from the screen after I spent the whole day working and internetting in the same fashion.

It's a piece of piss to set up a PC playing on your TV. I have my PC hooked up to my 40 inch TV and surround sound system and have two wireless keyboard and mouse and a couple of Windows XBOX360 pads for comfortable gaming from the sofa. This is the only way to get proper 1080P gaming despite what the developers and idiotic fanboys would have you believe.

[Mister Six]

Check out ad advert on TV for the latest cross-platform game. They'll show the PS3 and XBOX covers, but there'll be no mention of PC. Why the hell aren't Microsoft pushing harder?

Pushing who? The game's publishers are the ones that pay for the adverts. It's not like Microsoft can lean on them to demand a PC box in the adverts they don't pay for. And even if they could, why would they bother? People aren't going to buy Windows so they can play Black Ops on their PC. If Microsoft is going to lean on anyone for advertising it's going to be to push the Xbox.

Also lots of developers are ignoring their roots. GTA started off on PC and now Rockstar won't release Red Dead Redemption on PC. Alan Wake was originally a PC game, then became an 360 exclusive.

'Ignoring their roots'? Like they owe one single penny to PCs because that was where their software houses happened to start out? If they're not going PC exclusive or releasing it on PC at all it's because it's not going to make enough money to be worth their while. Should they lose money as a business because some people think they owe an inanimate object some kind of debt? Should Codemasters release Lord of the Rings Online for the ZX Spectrum?

PCs are horrendously overpriced and overcomplicated, and I find the entitlement expressed by some PC users to be infuriating. There is indeed no excuse for releasing games on the PC that are glitchy and then refusing to patch them, but if PC gaming isn't a viable avenue (because of hardware costs on the user's end, for the most part) then why should developers bother with the platform?

[Still Not George]

Every conversation I've ever had about why devs don't really bother with the PC outside of indies releasing on Steam and strategy wonks releasing on GG or Impulse revolves around two fundamental realities of the PC platform:

1) It takes forever to get PC games to actually work on the majority of PCs. Between driver inconsistencies, Windows being Windows and the endless new oddities thrown up by successive layers of new technology, it's a minor miracle to get a game working on a dev's own PC, let alone anyone else's. It may be a cliche, but consoles really do Just Fucking Work(TM). Releasing a game bug-free on the PC takes Valve-scale timeframes. Doing the same on a console takes a lot less time.

2) Any game you release on the PC will be pirated to bits within 30 seconds. Even if it's on Steam. Even if it's free. Even if every free download from the official website saves a kitten from a masturbation-related death. And contrary to wishful thinking and somewhat unlike the music industry, game piracy cuts deeply into profits in a way that's rather difficult to argue against.

Bearing those two in mind, essentially any pitch that includes "PC" and no other platforms will generally just not get made. The publishers won't go for it. If the money people won't go for it, it doesn't happen. Simple.

[chand]

Check out ad advert on TV for the latest cross-platform game. They'll show the PS3 and XBOX covers, but there'll be no mention of PC. Why the hell aren't Microsoft pushing harder?

Microsoft pushed the shit out of the Xbox for cross-platform ads. They went through a fairly big lull in massive 360 exclusives, so they kept paying to have "on Xbox 360!" stuck at the end of major cross-platform game ads. Sony very rarely do this in comparison, most of their advertising has been built on the exclusives.

[Zetetic]

I'm genuinely curious what is it about PC gaming that's construed as 'dead'.

There's plenty of linear bang-bang games, just as there are on the consoles. Most of the duller console games get ported to Windows, particularly those for the Xbox, and I'd widely assumed that most that don't, don't because there's been a considerable explicit incentive not to bother on the part of either Sony or Microsoft.

There's plenty of exploration in PC games still. The runaway successes like Minecraft. The mod community continues to churn out work of variable quality, but only as variable as the games that see commercial release. Free and independent developers produce games that range from consciously pretentious attempts at art (all too often obsessing about video games themselves, but still) to fun new ideas to prettier remakes of old concepts. Strategy games ranging from Civ 5 (which, granted simply as a game is terribly flawed in few ways) to Men of War. Games like STALKER show fantastic ambition, often at the price of eccentricity[nb]bugs[/nb].



I guess I don't know what kind of games you're missing from the PC.
(Deus Ex, perhaps... I matter of budgets and markets on the PC and elsewhere, I'd assume.)

SNG:
This is interesting. I'm curious about a couple of things though.
Regarding 1: This seems odd to me. At the low end, things are easy enough, right? It's not so hard to write something portable and reliable, so long as you're not pushing the boat out regarding graphics. At the high end, I'd assumed that these days you went Source/Gamebryo/Unreal and let someone else do the 'hard' work (ha). What kind of games were these guys pushing?
Regarding 2: I suppose the biggest impact of this is that we don't see high budget titles on the PC alone. Making low budget titles, the piracy obviously isn't such an issue.

Also, it's mainly odd that, according to this thread, that the biggest problem is shitty console ports. Don't buy them, since generally there are good enough ports of similar enough games that scratch the same itch. If you want a loud manshoot, there are loud manshoots, and if you want a stealthy manshoot then there are stealthy manshoots.

It's also weird to still be reading rants about Steam. One of the lovely changes in PC gaming, that hasn't come to the consoles quite yet, is the thankful obliteration of the relevance brick-and-mortar store.

[Zetetic]

- Grim Fandango: Vista really, really doesn't like this game. Installed a free launcher that botches things to get it working. It freezes about 10 minutes into the game.

You're better off playing it in an emulatorm to be honest. In the same way that you're better off not cramming Dreamcast disks into an Xbox 360 in the hope it'll work. Also, my copy of VisiCalc for Apple II doesn't work on my MacBook Pro. Ada Byron's notes on the analytical engine do bugger all for me, even though I've tried turning it off and on. Etc. Etc.

[chand]

It's also weird to still be reading rants about Steam. One of the lovely changes in PC gaming, that hasn't come to the consoles quite yet, is the thankful obliteration of the relevance brick-and-mortar store.

My objection to Steam was not as an online store, I like online stores, they're great.

[AsparagusTrevor]

People complain about not getting decades old games working on a PC, but 99% of the time there's a workaround. With consoles, there's backwards compatibility issues too that aren't fixable at all.

PCs are horrendously overpriced and overcomplicated, and I find the entitlement expressed by some PC users to be infuriating. There is indeed no excuse for releasing games on the PC that are glitchy and then refusing to patch them, but if PC gaming isn't a viable avenue (because of hardware costs on the user's end, for the most part) then why should developers bother with the platform?

So a viable platform for gaming should be ignored by developers because PCs are expensive? Yeah, they're overpriced - if you buy them from Alienware or something. Plus they aren't just for gaming, most people have a PC and you can add a decent graphics card for less than buying a console. Also, most PC games scale back a decent amount so they run on a wider range of specs. And you know what, we are entitled to these games, why the hell shouldn't we be? I paid for my computer, paid for Windows, paid for all my games, why shouldn't I get to play a game that's already been programmed?

'Ignoring their roots'? Like they owe one single penny to PCs because that was where their software houses happened to start out? If they're not going PC exclusive or releasing it on PC at all it's because it's not going to make enough money to be worth their while. Should they lose money as a business because some people think they owe an inanimate object some kind of debt? Should Codemasters release Lord of the Rings Online for the ZX Spectrum?

That would be a viable argument if the ZX Spectrum wasn't long dead and the PCs still very much alive. As it is, it's just idiotic. Don't forget console games start life on a PC, an XBOX 360 is basically PC hardware, it's not exactly a push to release a PC version of a game, even if it's digital download only to save on printing. The piracy excuse they use is bullshit, piracy is rife on consoles too.

Pushing who? The game's publishers are the ones that pay for the adverts. It's not like Microsoft can lean on them to demand a PC box in the adverts they don't pay for. And even if they could, why would they bother? People aren't going to buy Windows so they can play Black Ops on their PC. If Microsoft is going to lean on anyone for advertising it's going to be to push the Xbox.

Exactly, MS push XBOX ads, they own XBOX, they own Windows, they own Games for Windows, would it be so hard to have a caption 'also available for Windows'?  Also would it hurt to have XBOX exclusives on their Windows too, rather 'Microsoft exclusives'?

People might not buy Windows especially to play the newest game, but a lot of people build gaming PCs. Even some basic spotlight for PC as a gaming platform would be welcome. "Oh, you know that box you use for Facebook? You can play games on it too!" Every PC, every Windows license, every Microsoft certified piece of hardware, every subsidiary company of Microsoft that sells PC software and hardware, it's all money to MS.

I'm not wanting this to be a Console vs PC debate, I think they can and should coexist happily. I just want more respect paid to the PC as a gaming platform by developers and gamers.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I guess I don't know what kind of games you're missing from the PC.

Games that feel like they've been designed for the PC as if the platform was its rightful home. The late nineties felt like PC gaming was moving games forward, while when N64 and PsOne became outdated, it felt like consoles had become entrenched in earning a quick buck from the same audience. Almost the reverse is now the case, except with the one major flaw- consoles do not gradually evolve into more sophisticated systems. Perhaps the next thread should be 'what will be the next new console?'

[Zetetic]

Don't forget console games start life on a PC, an XBOX 360 is basically PC hardware, it's not exactly a push to release a PC version of a game, even if it's digital download only to save on printing.

You're a bit wrong in the details, but porting any Xbox 360 game to Windows shouldn't be particularly difficult, no. But it's still an expenditure of time, including providing support after the fact. Personally, I'd rather see fewer rushed console ports.

Also would it hurt to have XBOX exclusives on their Windows too, rather 'Microsoft exclusives'?

Yes. People might then buy the Windows version rather than the Xbox 360 version. The latter explicitly makes money for Microsoft, the former doesn't.
This also makes them less likely to buy an Xbox and therefore buy more Xbox games.

Every PC, every Windows license, every Microsoft certified piece of hardware, every subsidiary company of Microsoft that sells PC software and hardware, it's all money to MS.

Considering the PC gamer, it's also not very much money, and it's also a market that they already dominate.

[Zetetic]

Games that feel like they've been designed for the PC as if the platform was its rightful home. The late nineties felt like PC gaming was moving games forward, while when N64 and PsOne became outdated, it felt like consoles had become entrenched in earning a quick buck from the same audience.

Can you give me examples of those games? I'm not quite sure what you mean, but I am interested.

Almost the reverse is now the case, except with the one major flaw- consoles do not gradually evolve into more sophisticated systems. Perhaps the next thread should be 'what will be the next new console?'

'Sophisticated systems'? If by moving games forward, you mean 'more visual effects for the sake of more visual effects', I'm going to cry.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

'Sophisticated systems'? If by moving games forward, you mean 'more visual effects for the sake of more visual effects', I'm going to cry.

As tempting as that would be, I'm mainly talking about more capacity and more processing power. These things allow you more than just visual effects- they allow more things to be happening on screen- they allow 'levels' to expand in size and variety (or just dispense with them altogether)- they allow a greater sophistication in the to-the-second calculations the console needs to make to do some really sophisticated stuff. That helps games feel more intuitive. They improve artificial intelligence, a single good enough reason in itself.

Put it this way- do you want to play games on systems that are continually improving and offer more space and new opportunities to try new things, or on a system where games were already futilely nudging the developmental glass ceiling in 2008? It's a simple answer, one which you can make whether you think graphics are important or not at all important. (Personally I'm interested in graphics on an aesthetic/photo-real level and am perfectly capable of maintaining that interest as well as enjoying games in the same way you probably do. I think criticising people for it when it's a very interesting aspect of the artform, and takes the appreciation of visual art to a young audience is ignorant and ill-directed snobbery)

On PCs you got used to this improvement happening incrementally- every new release still seems more frontier-like and pioneering. Don't get me wrong, I still get hyped up about yer Fallouts and Fables but at the back of my mind, the knowledge that they've already basically made the game, and are just moving the pieces around restricts that excitement. You only get that feeling at the very start of a console's lifespan- and it is always an anti-climax, because 85% of the quality titles take 2 years to feed through.

[Zetetic]

As tempting as that would be, I'm mainly talking about more capacity and more processing power. These things allow you more than just visual effects- they allow more things to be happening on screen- they allow 'levels' to expand in size and variety (or just dispense with them altogether)- they allow a greater sophistication in the to-the-second calculations the console needs to make to do some really sophisticated stuff. That helps games feel more intuitive.

Except I don't think that's true. What makes a game feel more intuitive is having a coherent environment, having things responds as you'd expect them to, either realistically or at least by the rules of the world.

A very small part of that is power-dependent - deformable scenery for example, although even that I'd qualify as being possible for a long-time[nb]the major FPS example being Red Faction and the GeoMod engine in 2001) but introducing such difficulties in good level-design that it was never widely picked up. The rest of it, size and variety of levels, stuff 'happening' on screen, stuff responding to your actions in meaningful ways - that's investment of time. People have to sit down, think about how to produce these things and implement them. Art, programmers, urgh.

They improve artificial intelligence, a single good enough reason in itself.

This really, really, really, really, isn't a problem of processing power. It's a combination of conceptual difficulties and implementation difficulties.
You're to pick on it though - AI still sucks. That's why we've seen so many zombie games, that's why co-operative and competitive multiplayer continues to grow, particularly on the PC, and to a lesser extent 'massively singleplayer' approaches such as that found in Gratuitous Space Battles (you fight, in singleplayer, against human designed fleets).
(Personally, I can't much stand most competitive MP, because it requires such an investment in skill. A problem.)

I don't know where we go from here, I hasten to add. A nice idea would be simply abandoning attempts to implement AI by hand and use learning systems. There's a better case there for arguing that processing power will fix everything. Even then the difficulty these days isn't implementing such a system, it's training it against actual humans.

Put it this way- do you want to play games on systems that are continually improving and offer more space and new opportunities to try new things, or on a system where games were already futilely nudging the developmental glass ceiling in 2008? It's a simple answer, one which you can make whether you think graphics are important or not at all important. (Personally I'm interested in graphics on an aesthetic/photo-real level and am perfectly capable of maintaining that interest as well as enjoying games in the same way you probably do. I think criticising people for it when it's a very interesting aspect of the artform, and takes the appreciation of visual art to a young audience is ignorant and ill-directed snobbery)

You're probably right to call me out on it. I do like pretty games. I am amazed by increasingly realistic games.

But... I look at Crysis, I look at Rage (although, from a distance for now) and I even look at Source (increasingly aged, but Dear Esther) and the things that people can already do with them are beautiful. And, well, more important to me, imaginative. I suspect we do differ a little here. I'd take XIII (2003) over Crysis 2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqc3t5mj1YE&fmt=34

On PCs you got used to this improvement happening incrementally- every new release still seems more frontier-like and pioneering. Don't get me wrong, I still get hyped up about yer Fallouts and Fables but at the back of my mind, the knowledge that they've already basically made the game, and are just moving the pieces around restricts that excitement.

'Snap', I think is the term.

I don't just want a prettier Fallout, or a prettier Fable, or even a prettier Deus Ex. (Although all would be nice, and all would be trivial if you had the budget, even with today's hardware. Indeed, once Bethesda gets round to using id's engines, I imagine we'll end up with some very nice looking RPGs.) I don't even know what I want, beyond that I want to be surprised.

I think that a large part of the problem for your experience is that we've reached a point where it's hard to make improvement happen incrementally. All the stuff that can be improved incrementally is pretty solid these days. Graphics are fantastically good. Physics is good.

There's still room for more realistic graphics, but more realistic behaviour and environments require both paradigmatic shifts and truly huge investments of time (and therefore money). Neither come 'free' with better hardware.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I mentioned aesthetic/photo-real when discussing graphics because those are the two more interesting factors. XIII was a charming cel-shaded first-person shooter that took on a very strong comic book feel. I enjoyed it. Likewise, Jet Set Radio Future is a piece of explosive art. On the other hand art in stuff like Otogi made what was a basic slasher into a hyperreal piece of interactive art. That's one side of it. The other side which I'm also interested in is making games which want to be lifelike, feel more lifelike. I don't think there's any harm in that.

Pushing things forward in development is for the benefit of everyone. The nu-retro gaming stuff is great because it capitalises on all the subsequent developments since its hey-day, while retaining the aesthetic of...well...let's face it, for the most part, early 90's console platformers!

Sorry, I'll be back with more. I enjoyed reading your post.

[chand]

People complain about not getting decades old games working on a PC, but 99% of the time there's a workaround. With consoles, there's backwards compatibility issues too that aren't fixable at all.

One of those games I mentioned is old, and I tried various workarounds.

There are no backwards compatability issues on my PS3. It plays PS3 games. It does not play PS2 games. Seems straightforward enough.

I'm not too bothered about Grim Fandango. I am bothered about when recent-ish games either fail, require arsey workarounds, or including hair-tearing amounts of security/DRM procedures. I play PC games where I don't really have another choice, and in the majority of cases I have encountered problems, due to the complex nature of PCs and the various versions of Windows involved, hardware/software conflicts and so on.

The piracy excuse they use is bullshit, piracy is rife on consoles too.

No it isn't. I challenge you to find me a pirated PS3 game online now.

[AsparagusTrevor]

One of those games I mentioned is old, and I tried various workarounds.

There are no backwards compatability issues on my PS3. It plays PS3 games. It does not play PS2 games. Seems straightforward enough.

I'm not too bothered about Grim Fandango. I am bothered about when recent-ish games either fail, require arsey workarounds, or including hair-tearing amounts of security/DRM procedures. I play PC games where I don't really have another choice, and in the majority of cases I have encountered problems, due to the complex nature of PCs and the various versions of Windows involved, hardware/software conflicts and so on.

The fact it doesn't play PS2 games is a compatibility issue. Also the very reason I never took the plunge and got a PS3, I'd want to replace my PS2 under the TV, not add to it (I know the early ones had software emulation, and the US ones had hardware compatibilty, but removing it was quite an oversight). Windows 7 will run a game designed for Windows 98 with either an emulator, a workaround or a patch. I'm also bothered about when modern games require this to work, hence my annoyance at Dead Rising. This is more often than not poor development or hardware software issues closer to home.

No it isn't. I challenge you to find me a pirated PS3 game online now.

Five minutes of looking on one website:
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/ps3-game-collection-1387697/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/ps3-game-collection-|-daily-update-|-1gb-parts-1314990/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/ps3-us-medal-honor-limited-edition-fixed-1435539/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/james-bond-007-quantum-solace-1438262/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/agarest-generations-war-eur-jb-ps3-lightforce-1437366/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/far-cry-2-ps3-jailbreak-1437294/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/%5Bmulti%5D-soul-calibur-iv-usa-jb-ps3-gsxr-1435664/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/far-cry-2-ps3-jailbreak-1437294/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/wet-ps3-jailbreak-1437236/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/enslaved-odyssey-west-ps3-jailbreak-1437260/
http://tehparadox.com/forum/f76/%5Bps3%5Dcall-duty-black-ops-eur-jb-ps3-callofdoody-1437146/

And about 10 times as many for XBOX360.

[Ignatius_S]

Re: console piracy – there has been a fair bit in the news very recently about the PS3, because of ways to jailbreak the machines and Sony has updated firmware - http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=263352

Last year Microsoft banned modded Xbox 360s from Xbox Live and claimed that this blocked up to 1 million units. There may be those who simply want to tinker, but the vast majority of people who mod their units do so in order to run pirate games.

Going back to updating firmware, this a main method that Sony tried to stop people running pirated or homebrew games and media on the PSP. I can't remember the exact figures off the top off my head, but although the first PSP sold pretty well in the States, after a year, the average user had bought a pitiful number of games – less than three, if I remember rightly and piracy was attributed to this. Sony recently said this is a big problem - http://www.1up.com/news/sony-believes-piracy-psp-biggest

Nintendo DS has a big piracy problem due to flash memory cards (which have been ruled legal in France) and although GTA: Chinatown sold pretty well, the numbers were down on what was expected although forums were ablaze with talk about the game... that may not prove anything, but I can think of certain threads where people were praising games as great but who had basically said that they don't buy them, but pirate them

In the past, I've known plenty of people with a chipped or modded Xbox, PS2 etc etc and from time to time there will be this arrest or that of people who chip machines on quite a big scale – e.g.:

http://www.reghardware.com/2010/05/04/console_chipping_jail_sentence/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/05/07/computer_fair_piracy_arrests/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/21/outlaw_xbox_mods/

[Mister Six]

So a viable platform for gaming should be ignored by developers because PCs are expensive?

The point is that they're too expensive for most users to consider building a gaming PC - or at least one that produces graphics equivalent to a PS3. Why spend £300 on a graphics card alone when you can use the same money to buy a console? And because of that the audience for PC gaming is smaller than that for consoles - small enough to make development and conversion time prohibitively expensive.

Yeah, they're overpriced - if you buy them from Alienware or something.

And where do you think most people will get their PCs from? Not everyone has the knowledge (or the friends who have the knowledge) to put together a game-capable PC, or even to upgrade the one they have. And many more would rather just buy a new box and get playing straight away rather than worry about drivers, conflicts and all that.

Again, this leads to a smaller user-base which leads to fewer people willing to buy games which means that converting, pressing and publishing the games becomes financially un-viable.

And you know what, we are entitled to these games, why the hell shouldn't we be?

See, that's what I'm talking about. You're not entitled to anything at all. You haven't paid Capcom for Dead Rising 1 so they're under no obligation to give it to you. They don't owe you a thing.

That would be a viable argument if the ZX Spectrum wasn't long dead and the PCs still very much alive. As it is, it's just idiotic.

Okay, I was being facetious. Still, like I said - developers don't owe the PC or PC users anything at all. So they started out on PCs. So what? They would've started out on Amigas if they were the big thing at the time - or Spectrums, or the ruddy chaos engine. They didn't use PCs because PCs are somehow special, they used them because they were the right hardware at the time.

Don't forget console games start life on a PC, an XBOX 360 is basically PC hardware, it's not exactly a push to release a PC version of a game, even if it's digital download only to save on printing.

It might be 'basically PC hardware', but it's very specifically constructed and developed PC hardware. If you make a game for the Xbox you know exactly what the machine is capable of and how to use it. If you're converting to the PC you have to worry about scaling, not to mention faffing about with installers, control schemes, new bugs and glitches raised by the altered code, etc. That means another team of people, another go-around at the QC phase and more publishing costs (even if it's online you have to worry about servers, bandwitch, hosting fees etc).

The piracy excuse they use is bullshit, piracy is rife on consoles too.

No, it's not. Piracy is far more of a problem with PCs because once a game is cracked anyone with a connection to the web can download the game and run it immediately. To do the same with the Xbox you have to burn it to a HDDVD, then get your Xbox chipped (thus losing all online functions) and then hope that the transfer process went well enough that the game will run.

And remember that most console users don't have the technical know-how or drive to bother doing this in the first place...

Exactly, MS push XBOX ads, they own XBOX, they own Windows, they own Games for Windows, would it be so hard to have a caption 'also available for Windows'?  Also would it hurt to have XBOX exclusives on their Windows too, rather 'Microsoft exclusives'?

People might not buy Windows especially to play the newest game, but a lot of people build gaming PCs. Even some basic spotlight for PC as a gaming platform would be welcome. "Oh, you know that box you use for Facebook? You can play games on it too!" Every PC, every Windows license, every Microsoft certified piece of hardware, every subsidiary company of Microsoft that sells PC software and hardware, it's all money to MS.

People are going to get Windows installed on their PCs anyway, for - as you say - Facebook, email, spreadsheets and all that. Microsoft's already getting their money. They don't get any money, however, from third-party PC games. Unlike third-party Xbox games. If Microsoft can encourage people to have an Xbox and a PC then they're doubling their revenue streams. Again, money will always win out.

[Still Not George]

Except I don't think that's true. What makes a game feel more intuitive is having a coherent environment, having things responds as you'd expect them to, either realistically or at least by the rules of the world.

A very small part of that is power-dependent - deformable scenery for example, although even that I'd qualify as being possible for a long-time[nb]the major FPS example being Red Faction and the GeoMod engine in 2001) but introducing such difficulties in good level-design that it was never widely picked up. The rest of it, size and variety of levels, stuff 'happening' on screen, stuff responding to your actions in meaningful ways - that's investment of time. People have to sit down, think about how to produce these things and implement them. Art, programmers, urgh.

Thing is, though, the PC is the grand example of why these things are in some way dependent on processing power. Take Supreme Commander as an example - a game reliant on vast amounts of pathfinding and physics, and therefore demanding far more in the way of CPU power than it did graphics. Hell, even Minecraft runs like a dog on a slow machine due to the realities of modelling so many completely manipulable elements. The Hearts of Iron series is yet another example, where the ability of modern PCs to process ungodly streams of continually changing information is really rather well used.

Some of this stuff is filtering through to consoles due to multicore console processors, but not much.

All that aside, though, most of what you're doing is dismissing the advances in graphics processing that the games-buying public have repeatedly and reliably demanded of the industry for much of the past 2 decades. The endless upgrades in visual fidelity don't happen because the games industry is possessed of some kind of weird fetish for pixels; gamers demand it, is the simple truth.

[AsparagusTrevor]

The point is that they're too expensive for most users to consider building a gaming PC - or at least one that produces graphics equivalent to a PS3. Why spend £300 on a graphics card alone when you can use the same money to buy a console? And because of that the audience for PC gaming is smaller than that for consoles - small enough to make development and conversion time prohibitively expensive.

And where do you think most people will get their PCs from? Not everyone has the knowledge (or the friends who have the knowledge) to put together a game-capable PC, or even to upgrade the one they have. And many more would rather just buy a new box and get playing straight away rather than worry about drivers, conflicts and all that.

Again, this leads to a smaller user-base which leads to fewer people willing to buy games which means that converting, pressing and publishing the games becomes financially un-viable.

I don't think the PC gaming base is as small as made out. There are millions of Steam users alone. Plus gaming doesn't have to be done on high end PCs, and doesn't have to be top-of-the-range shooters. Plus to get a similar performance and graphical quality to Xbox games, a high spec isn't needed.

See, that's what I'm talking about. You're not entitled to anything at all. You haven't paid Capcom for Dead Rising 1 so they're under no obligation to give it to you. They don't owe you a thing.

We're as entitled as console gamers. Why the hell shouldn't we be? I didn't buy Dead Rising 1 because it wasn't available. I did buy Gears of War 1 so using your logic I'm entitled to Gears of War 2?

People are going to get Windows installed on their PCs anyway, for - as you say - Facebook, email, spreadsheets and all that. Microsoft's already getting their money. They don't get any money, however, from third-party PC games. Unlike third-party Xbox games. If Microsoft can encourage people to have an Xbox and a PC then they're doubling their revenue streams. Again, money will always win out.

That's the thing though. I am never going to buy an Xbox. I'd never buy a PS3 without backwards compatibility for my PS2 games (which I could emulate on PC anyway). By denying me any games I'd buy on my chosen platform (which was certainly a viable gaming platform still going strong when I built my current PC) they're losing out on my money anyway. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world, or even my area that feels the same.

I just want a decent choice, same as console users. I don't think it's unreasonable of me to expect that.

[Zetetic]

Thing is, though, the PC is the grand example of why these things are in some way dependent on processing power. Take Supreme Commander as an example - a game reliant on vast amounts of pathfinding and physics, and therefore demanding far more in the way of CPU power than it did graphics. Hell, even Minecraft runs like a dog on a slow machine due to the realities of modelling so many completely manipulable elements. The Hearts of Iron series is yet another example, where the ability of modern PCs to process ungodly streams of continually changing information is really rather well used.

Scale. Fair point. Stuff like Heart of Iron, Victoria, are good examples. Although I'll note that both of those aren't realtime for two reasons - one because they're designed to work on hardware that approximates a set-top box (well, a Series 1 TiVo say in the case of HoI2) and two because humans are entirely unable to process, as you say 'ungodly streams of continually changing information'.

At the very least though, I'll admit that they illustrate that increased processing power makes it easier for people to create more complex games. Which is very important - it's interesting to note stuff like Civ 5, where a massive amount of the game proper is written in Lua.

(Supreme Commander gets round the second problem, of limited human attention, rather neatly by making the individual units and battles so entirely uninteresting that the human player need never concern themselves with it. But nevertheless, it was well received, and the scale is at least kind of impressive.)

Minecraft though. That's a good example. I'll be curious to see what performance increases are managed and where. But it's an application of the ability scale that's a good example.

So, uh, yes. Where there are processing power increases, they are being taken advantage of, sometimes to worthwhile ends. I do stand corrected.
I suppose I'd partly gotten it into my head that increases in processing power had largely stalled on the PC in the last few years (and in part, I do think that's slightly true, in so far as the major increases now consist of moving to multiple cores and so on, with the caveat that there's an awful lot that can be parallelised.)

All that aside, though, most of what you're doing is dismissing the advances in graphics processing that the games-buying public have repeatedly and reliably demanded of the industry for much of the past 2 decades. The endless upgrades in visual fidelity don't happen because the games industry is possessed of some kind of weird fetish for pixels; gamers demand it, is the simple truth.

True enough, but I'm not trying to dismiss those advances. They're important. They have allowed for games to look better, and to achieve more in how they look.
What I was saying that if the 'death of PC gaming' now consists of the fact that PC aren't getting more tree-like trees than consoles, then I'm happy enough to embrace it. If that's all PC gaming had to differentiate itself from consoles, then to hell with it.

I'm not even sure that's true though, as the better kind of console port does look better on PC, and there are still advances. Rage looks pretty to me, and the important thing there, not least for Carmack's own desires, appears to be scalability.
I'll have to admit a bias in having only a laptop these days, and never being at the cutting edge of PC hardware.

I suppose, if I'm trying to rescue my claims:
There is still room for raw processing power to effect nice things. Scale's a damn good example of this, although itself it brings design challenges. It's also now easier to write something like Minecraft, where at some expense of efficiency, you can reach pretty much any PC (regardless of OS), so long as you stick to the right frameworks, or, if you're not doing it for profit (and don't care about it being Free though) piggybacking nice engines with nice scripting systems, and some of that's the product of increased power. (I'd be curious if you agree with this. It's only based on my casual observation.)

As regards graphics - there are still incremental increases going on, on the PC. But it's difficult to wow these days, I'm prepared to say, simply because graphics are already pretty good.

[Mister Six]

I don't think the PC gaming base is as small as made out. There are millions of Steam users alone. Plus gaming doesn't have to be done on high end PCs, and doesn't have to be top-of-the-range shooters. Plus to get a similar performance and graphical quality to Xbox games, a high spec isn't needed.

It'll still cost you a couple of hundred quid, though, even if you're upgrading what you have. Inevitably, people look at the price tag and thing 'fuck it - I'll just buy an Xbox'. And while there are millions of Steam users, how many of them are actively buying games? I'm technically a Steam user but I haven't logged in to the thing for three or four years now. And how many of them are buying the right kinds of games? If the market for FPSes (say) is considerably less on PCs than on consoles where's the motivation to bother converting them?

We're as entitled as console gamers.

Yes. You're entitled to nothing until you pay for it. Since you're not paying for Dead Rising 1 you're not entitled to it.

I did buy Gears of War 1 so using your logic I'm entitled to Gears of War 2?

No, you're entitled to Gears of War 1, which you paid for. You're not entitled to anything more than that. You're not entitled to games that haven't been developed/translated to the system.

That's the thing though. I am never going to buy an Xbox. I'd never buy a PS3 without backwards compatibility for my PS2 games (which I could emulate on PC anyway). By denying me any games I'd buy on my chosen platform (which was certainly a viable gaming platform still going strong when I built my current PC) they're losing out on my money anyway. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world, or even my area that feels the same.

Yeah, but you're statistically in the minority. Most of the people I know who play video games have a PC (or Mac, admittedly) and a console. If there were more people like you then they'd make more PC games. They're not going this to spite you. If there's money to be made they'll make it. But if the profit margins aren't good enough then you're shafted. That's the truth of it.

[Mister Six]

Thing is, though, the PC is the grand example of why these things are in some way dependent on processing power. Take Supreme Commander as an example - a game reliant on vast amounts of pathfinding and physics, and therefore demanding far more in the way of CPU power than it did graphics. Hell, even Minecraft runs like a dog on a slow machine due to the realities of modelling so many completely manipulable elements. The Hearts of Iron series is yet another example, where the ability of modern PCs to process ungodly streams of continually changing information is really rather well used.

One of the Halo games - I think it was Halo 3 - had the AI scaled down to accommodate flashier graphics.

[Slaaaaabs]

No it isn't. I challenge you to find me a pirated PS3 game online now.

Piracy on the PS3 is actually easier than it is on the 360 at the moment. You can connect one of several devices (smart phones, programmable USB sticks, CALCULATORS!) via USB and run a payload package at boot to enable unsigned game booting and Blu-ray spoofing.

One of the Halo games - I think it was Halo 3 - had the AI scaled down to accommodate flashier graphics.

Where did you read that? If anything Bungie will drop the graphical niceties down a notch to allow their AI and other niceties to function.