Cliffy B and Epic claim they are done with the PC, consoles primary focus from here

Canadian in Berlin said:
Because I have no interest in sports , racing , or action/3rd person games. :p:D
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Although I far prefer GoW on the PC, and the most realistic and enjoyable racing sims are still on PC (GTR2/GT Legends/Live for Speed/etc.). Hell, even all seven thousand EA sports titles are available on PC, and nothing is stopping you from plugging your computer into your television.
 
quadnad said:
Although I far prefer GoW on the PC, and the most realistic and enjoyable racing sims are still on PC (GTR2/GT Legends/Live for Speed/etc.). Hell, even all seven thousand EA sports titles are available on PC, and nothing is stopping you from plugging your computer into your television.
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Exactly, so I have no need for a console. :)

Plus my TV is a tiny old thing that I only use to listen to the news, get the weather or watch an interesting documentary.
 
Console games just don't have the depth and complexity, nor the quality I've come to expect from PC games. There are a lot of well built console games, I just have higher standards for image quality, frame rate, load times, control and gameplay complexity.

Part of the anger coming from PC gamers when concerning cross developed games is the way they are "dumbed down". I think the best example I can give is Thief, the first and second in the series were quite complex games, Thief 2 had about 5 different movement speeds and required use of the whole keyboard to map keys, it had a complex stealth system, with difficult yet rewarding gameplay.

Thief3 is the first in the Thief series to get cross developed with consoles and all of a sudden all the realism and depth is gone, we have blue trails behind the arrows, loot glints in the dark to make it easy to spot, highlights for selected objects stop being subtle tints of grey and become bright neon blue, 3rd person is added so you can cheat and look around corners, all the complex tools like rope arrows are removed, and in my opinion the levels were vastly simplified. Not to mention the levels lost their original massive feel and were plauged with loading zones because the hardware in consoles is too crap to manage entire levels.

How can loyal fans of the Thief series put up with that and not take offence to the intrusion that consoles have made into our gaming domain? I honestly can't think of a better game to highlight the effects of what the console intrustion does to the masterful crafting of well designed gameplay. Deus Ex is a close 2nd.
 
My Gaming PC is really for DOS games. The new stuff is all consoles. I really do with we'd get some precise mouse and keyboard action via some of these new consoles USB ports though. I mean we have the high rez now so give us the control! (I know it's an unfair playing field then...but cmon!)
 
Decko87 said:
Shit if you spend over two grand on building a high end rig, pick up a damn console for four hundred bucks. What's stopping you? Base stereotypes? The inability to accept games are on more then just one platform? Pull your heads out of your asses and take a deep breath, each platform has their genre's and markets change, it doesn't mean it's going to be worse, it's just different.
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What's stopping me is the lack of interest in any genre that works well on consoles.

I play three kinds of games: FPS, RTS, and *serious* RPG. None of those work well on console.

FPS: Give a mouse or I'm not touching it.

RTS: Micro with a joystick? hahahahahahaha

RPG: Any RPG that can be dumbed down to two joysticks and a half-dozen buttons simply doesn't have enough control for me to really get into it. I'm talking NWN-style RPGs here. The closest I've seen to a really good RPG on console was KOTOR, and it left something to be desired.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
A single player game should need to check with an online server every so often in order to keep a level loaded/stay in-game/etc.
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I'd be pretty miffed if my single-player game couldn't be used without an internet connection.

Actually, I'd be downright irate.
 
quadnad said:
Although I far prefer GoW on the PC, and the most realistic and enjoyable racing sims are still on PC (GTR2/GT Legends/Live for Speed/etc.). Hell, even all seven thousand EA sports titles are available on PC, and nothing is stopping you from plugging your computer into your television.
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except the NHL games on the PC are horrid. That's why I bought a PS3, for NHL games and Metal Gear Solid.....that's pretty much all I use a console for. Everything else I think is better on a PC
 
PopeKevinI said:
I'd be pretty miffed if my single-player game couldn't be used without an internet connection.

Actually, I'd be downright irate.
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I felt the same way, but really, when you think about it... this is where things are going....

internet connections are in pretty much any house that has a good enough computer, and wifi/cellular networks are becoming ubiquitous.... so having the base engine of a game do constant checks and updates shouldnt be a problem in the mid-long term, and if it becomes impossible to pirate single and multiplayer... well then the PCs piracy problem will be solved.

and isn't this the most desired way to control piracy? I'd much rather that than having the game install spyware on my PC that messes with my drivers and other system files like some recent games have done. Its also better than having to require special hardware that takes away the wide open nature of PC hardware.... really, online checks for singleplayer really aren't that bad.....
 
Do it like stardock, imo. You can get the game for free if you want.

To play online you have to be up to date, to be up to date you need a unique CD key.

and yes, the updates end up on bit torrent at some point, but it seems to work well enough for them.
 
Frosteh said:
I honestly can't think of a better game to highlight the effects of what the console intrustion does to the masterful crafting of well designed gameplay.
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I can't think of one either. The Elder Scrolls fans got dealt a serious blow with Oblivion, but I think, overall, Thief fans were more dissapointed with Deadly Shadows than ES fans were with Oblivion. What's rather curious is that Morrowind, a pretty damn complex RPG for a console, sold very well on the Xbox, and was extremely popular. Still, Todd Howard & Co. inevitably came to the conclusion that further simplification was necessary to move the number of units they wanted to move for Oblivion. And now they're no doubt abusing the Fallout IP (another of my favorites) to make their margins, having simply outbid the original creators of the property to be able to do so.

I think the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, BioShock, got hammered pretty hard as well. No leaning, crouching, walking or complex interaction is representative of the typical backwards-evolution to get popular PC IPs to play on consoles.

Frankly, I don't think it's as much about the lack of complex control as it is that developers are just targetting a mentally-deficient audience who don't have the functional capacity to understand the simple concept of 'arrow goes where reticle indicates' (and things of that nature).

On the subject of Cliffy B/Epic...if they're done with the PC, then I'm likely done with them. The only things that Epic puts out these days that interest me are the engines -- I really have no interest in their next iteration of "Generic Mutliplayer First-Person Shooter".
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
I felt the same way, but really, when you think about it... this is where things are going....

internet connections are in pretty much any house that has a good enough computer, and wifi/cellular networks are becoming ubiquitous.... so having the base engine of a game do constant checks and updates shouldnt be a problem in the mid-long term, and if it becomes impossible to pirate single and multiplayer... well then the PCs piracy problem will be solved.

and isn't this the most desired way to control piracy? I'd much rather that than having the game install spyware on my PC that messes with my drivers and other system files like some recent games have done. Its also better than having to require special hardware that takes away the wide open nature of PC hardware.... really, online checks for singleplayer really aren't that bad.....
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There are plenty of places where wireless coverage isn't great, and let's face it...even where it is, there is still a significant cost associated with cellular and satellite internet service right now. If I buy a single player RPG and put it on my laptop, I shouldn't have to connect to the internet every time it wants to phone home to be able to play the game I paid for. What if I'm on a long plane flight and it decides it's time to cut me off because it can't hit the server?

No, thanks. Activation is fine, but I expect an offline alternative for the intial activation (like MS uses for Windows, make a phone call) and I'd better be able to use the game when and how I want. Or I'm not buying it.
 
quadnad said:
I think a lot of the "console hatred" exists because many long-standing PC gamers have seen their favorite franchises bastardized to run on a console and then ported back to PC with poor quality (not just a generic "ports are crap" mentality). Deus Ex, for example. PC gamers have come to expect deep and involving games which we almost never see on consoles.
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Pretty much sums up how I feel about multi-platform games.

If they want to focus exclusively on console games, then I guess that's fine by me. If PC games remained PC exclusives and Console games remained on the console, then we won't have to worry so much about games not reaching their full potential solely because they're designed to reach the largest possible user base.

I'm always apprehensive when a sequal to a favorite game is being released multi-platform. Some are very good, some are bastardized, none seem to reach their full potential.

Businesses want to make money, so they may choose to release on many platforms to make more money (and consequently work with a larger budget). I guess this is fine by me too, but only if they use their budget wisely to create the best game they can. However, since they want to reach the largest possible audience they are forced to design in accordance to what the Average Joe wants so alot of the budget would go toward frivolous things rather than making a great game (for example: full voice acting by celebrities).

I think the greatest games are the ones designed for (relatively) niche markets. In other words: platform exclusive.
 
Frosteh said:
Deus Ex is a close 2nd.
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I'm still pissed off about that. I was such a huge Deus Ex fan and was so looking forward to a sequel. Then I fired up the demo . . . I would have been less offended if Warren Spector had come to my house to open up my Deus Ex box and shit in it, because that would have represented more attention to the pc aspect of the game than was evidenced by the consolized turd they released.

Oblivion at least had the worst of the consolitis modded out of it in short order.
 
rls669 said:
I'm still pissed off about that. I was such a huge Deus Ex fan and was so looking forward to a sequel. Then I fired up the demo . . . I would have been less offended if Warren Spector had come to my house to open up my Deus Ex box and shit in it, because that would have represented more attention to the pc aspect of the game than was evidenced by the consolized turd they released.

Oblivion at least had the worst of the consolitis modded out of it in short order.
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And you'd have a collectible case mod. :D
 
I dont blame Epic one little bit, it's just raw numbers and economics......XBox 360 is selling at breakneck speed, Microsoft is seeing shortages.......in year 2+

Gears of War was the first good looking game on the 360 next to Kameo and maybe Ghost Recon......so of course it sold well, and MS marketed the shit out of it. AND the customer base is huge now.......so even if your game is a turd....(Kane and what-ever rings a bell) it will sell a million or more copies.

Plus you only have to develop for a single computer,single GPU and proprietary OS.

Whats not to like, and whats so surprising?
ID is going to do the same thing......it's all about money and nothing else.

I dont like consoles......but what are you gonna do??? Still 400 dollar XBox vs several thousand dollar PC.......like I said, money.
 
magoo said:
ID is going to do the same thing......it's all about money and nothing else.
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They are one company that I think is capable of going multi-platform in an acceptable manner. Not to mention their games usually (always) contain simplistic control schemes, simple config menus, etc. anyway. The only thing that would determine the platform for me on an id game would be controller preference, and it's not like they'd take away mouse control on the PC version of a game.
 
I actually salivate at the prospect of a REAL quake game being made for the consoles, with REAL quake movement and weapons, none of that dumbed down shit.... and with keyboard and mouse control.

that would be great... all of the real quake gameplay, and a huge playerbase to play against, not to mention almost impossibly to cheat setups....

*drool*
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
I actually salivate at the prospect of a REAL quake game being made for the consoles, with REAL quake movement and weapons, none of that dumbed down shit.... and with keyboard and mouse control.

that would be great... all of the real quake gameplay, and a huge playerbase to play against, not to mention almost impossibly to cheat setups....

*drool*
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Their game is "Rage" and is a motor car themed, MadMax type of thing, nothing to do with Quake.
 
magoo said:
Their game is "Rage" and is a motor car themed, MadMax type of thing, nothing to do with Quake.
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I know :( sad about that... I want a Quake 3 redux on PS3 with all the tweakable console commands and configs we had on the PC and with full KB/M support.... and the basic mods like CPMA and RA3 :)
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
I actually salivate at the prospect of a REAL quake game being made for the consoles, with REAL quake movement and weapons, none of that dumbed down shit.... and with keyboard and mouse control.

that would be great... all of the real quake gameplay, and a huge playerbase to play against, not to mention almost impossibly to cheat setups....

*drool*
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They did that for the Dreamcast with Q3, mouse and all. Framerate was lower (but still acceptable imho) than one would normally accept in mp on the pc, had a max of 4 live internet players, and the fact that Dreamcast was abandoned so quickly is prolly why so few people remember it..
 
magoo said:
Their game is "Rage" and is a motor car themed, MadMax type of thing, nothing to do with Quake.
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id's plan is to move another Quake Arena-type game on id Tech 5 after the release of Quake Zero, using the new secondary dev team, and it'll probably be multiplatform just like Rage.

ID is going to do the same thing......it's all about money and nothing else.
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id isn't doing the same thing. They're shipping Rage for the PC, X360, PS3 and the Mac, and they're actually able to do so without any real additional effort. The engine and its code are designed to be pretty much completely platform-agnostic (in other words, compile once run everywhere).

I fail to see how that's the same thing as what Epic's doing.
 
magoo said:
Microsoft is seeing shortages.......in year 2+
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Due to mismanagement, not demand. It put up worse numbers than last January. There are a billion arcade systems piled up but nobody wants them.

phide said:
id's plan is to move another Quake Arena-type game on id Tech 5 after the release of Quake Zero, using the new secondary dev team, and it'll probably be multiplatform just like Rage.
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This sounds good.
 
Epic games aren't selling because they are shit. Gears of War PC is a joke, technical problems everywhere, endless hitches even on top of the line systems, constant loss of save files, no dedicated server support - do I need to keep going? Hell, I couldn't even start the damn game when I got it. UT3 is just a prettier version of 2K4, literally. People who like UT are either sticking with the original or 2k4, there's no point moving to UT3 when the community is tiny. Who's going to play it when there are much superior multiplayer games out in the market such as Team Fortress 2 and COD4?

Epic has no one to blame but themselves.
 
aznpxdd said:
Who's going to play it when there are much superior multiplayer games out in the market such as Team Fortress 2 and COD4?
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Always so funny when people point out this game. Forgetting that basically they said why are we building for the PC it has more of a pirate community.
 
PC gaming is still number one. WoW has 10 million subscribers. Steam has 15 million subscribers. Crysis sold over a million copies despite having extraordinarily high hardware requirements. Even a small budget, little publicized game like Sins of a Solar Empire can do fairly well. A victory for PC gaming.

Microsoft has lost 7 billion dollars in the console market. There's no doubt that the PS3 has lost billions so far. Looks to me like console gaming is having more trouble, except for Nintendo who is kicking both their butts.
 
Microsoft has lost 7 billion dollars in the console market. There's no doubt that the PS3 has lost billions so far. Looks to me like console gaming is having more trouble, except for Nintendo who is kicking both their butts.
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MS and Sony losing money to subsidzie hardware sales is in no way a sign that the console market is doing poorly. Its just the nature of the market now, and if companies want to release bleeding edge hardware, they realize people will not be willing to pay for the real cost of it. With the money loss going all towards lowering the MSRP of the hardware so more people can buy it, this helps the developers. If anything, it means that the hardware buying consumer is getting more than they paid for. You can not say that about PC hardware.

And yeah, Nintendo really has been curbstomping MS and Sony with profits. Both the Gamecube and Wii hardware were generating profit for Nintendo from day one. I suspect the DS (and DS Lite) also launched as profitable items. Remember that Nintendo almost fell off the map with the Gamecube though, so its not like Nintendo never messes up.
 
GORANKAR said:
They did that for the Dreamcast with Q3, mouse and all. Framerate was lower (but still acceptable imho) than one would normally accept in mp on the pc, had a max of 4 live internet players, and the fact that Dreamcast was abandoned so quickly is prolly why so few people remember it..
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lol, my best friends actually started out playing Quake 3 on the Dreamcast. I would own them using my PC and so it made them want a PC also.... and from there they each bought PCs and PC copies of Quake 3..... and the rest is history (until college came around for all of us :()

Q3 on the dreamcast suffered from the fact that DC was a failing console, keyboard/mouse was proprietary, so werent used much, and broadband wasn't so widespread. I bet if it came out now on 360/PS3 with keyboard, mouse support and cross platform play it would be a big hit with alot of people!
 
GoW looks great on my PC (all details maxed, post processing on intense) and runs smooth as all hell.
 
inotocracy said:
GoW looks great on my PC (all details maxed, post processing on intense) and runs smooth as all hell.
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Have you played online, or have you saved game files disappeared yet? The problems with the PC version of GoW weren't the looks.
 
magoo said:
ID is going to do the same thing......it's all about money and nothing else.
.
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So just because ID decides to make a multiplatform game, they are all of a sudden in the same boat as Epic?

Maybe if ID dumbs down the interface, gameplay, online settings, etc etc that UT 3 did then, maybe then, ID will be in the same boat.

Valve put the Orange Box on both the PC / consoles at the same time but the PC didn't suffer at all, hell, Valve gives the PC version of Team Fortress 2 waaaaaaaaaaay more love because AFAIK, the 360 / PS3 versions have not gotten ANY of the free maps the PC version has gotten yet (CTF Well and Badlands). And when they do, 360 users probably have to pay for them.

Just because a company makes multiplatform games dosen't already put them in the same boat as Epic, it's when they decide to dumb down the game for consoles and then give the PC that same exact dumbed down game.
 
Cliffy B is just being a whiny bitch. Boohoohoo, UT3 didn't sell on PC. Yeah... That might be because all Epic did was slap a new fucking engine on UT2K4 and expect it to beat out a flurry of better games.

Great engine, crap game; someone get Cliffy a hankie.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
Ugh. Crysis wouldn't be my pick as the poster child for PC gaming. Irregular framerates, questionable AI, and a couple game-breaking bugs that forced me to restart the entire game.
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But Crysis WAS supposed to be the next big thing. It sold well, certainly not to the expectations, but it's not regarded as the next big thing because it felt like a same tired sci-fi motif that has been exhausted.
 
PC gaming has it's "awesome game" spurts here and there, but not as frequent as consoles do IMO. Devs know that they can make consoles games and that it will sell better than PC games, it's just where the money's at.
 
Because console gamers are sheep and will buy shit in comparison to PC gamers, they take compromise over quality all the time.

Pc gamers don't just buy things mindlessly. They are a community and if a dev fucks up they'll pay for it in the end. This is the exact case with Epic and UE3. They didn't bother pushing the game forward other than just doing a few balance tweaks and moving it to a new engine. When they released the demo the amount of complaints they got were through the roof about the lack of change and the fact that the game looked like it was made for a console (All the way down to the UI) and then ported haphazardly to the PC. And yet Epic didn't bother doing anything about it and just released the game in the busiest season in years with barely no advertising to speak of. They brought this on themselves.

Then you have small companies like Stardock and Ironclad, that have a very niche PC title and a new IP to boot (sins of a solar empire) and yet are able to sell the game very successfully. Look at how they marketed the game and how they talked to their community. I'm really beginning to get tired of publishers and devs blaming PC gaming itself on the lack of sales, when it's they themselves that are the fundamental problem.

I mean shit, take a look at what Blizzard is doing with Starcraft 2. They KNOW the game would be nothing without the community, which is why they actually hired a PR dedicated to talking to the fans and fansites of Starcraft. The fans have monthly forum discussion topics with the developers and they actually listen and make changes to the game if needed.
 
aznpxdd said:
Because console gamers are sheep and will buy shit in comparison to PC gamers, they take compromise over quality all the time.

Pc gamers don't just buy things mindlessly. They are a community and if a dev fucks up they'll pay for it in the end. This is the exact case with Epic and UE3. They didn't bother pushing the game forward other than just doing a few balance tweaks and moving it to a new engine. When they released the demo the amount of complaints they got were through the roof about the lack of change and the fact that the game looked like it was made for a console (All the way down to the UI) and then ported haphazardly to the PC. And yet Epic didn't bother doing anything about it and just released the game in the busiest season in years with barely no advertising to speak of. They brought this on themselves.
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QFT, words of wisdom.....
 
Epic needs to get over themselves. It's the pot calling the kettle black with his "pc has devolved into point and click games" - add a grunting testosterone freak and you've got a genuine Epic game. They're lucky they came out with Gears in a 360 market starved for games, because that shit was nothing special.

Games have(should have) evolved from "shoot this shit, blow this shit up" People want depth and character, something a UT2K3 facelift game does not supply. Did they ever think the game didn't sell because it... sucks?
 
No offense, but if PC gaming is dieing why is nvidia getting record sales numbers on their gpu's and people are buying expensive hardware these days more than ever. Exactly as other people said, console gamers are generally mindless sheep who will buy the next Barby Horse Adventures without even giving a wink...... Pc gamers want good games, and expect good games..... Look at TF2 and CS:S, two great games made by valve, almost impossible to pirate, and are selling extremely well....... There will always be pc gaming.....
 
Cliffy is pissed GoW and UT3 sold poorly on PC, but it's not the PC's fault but his and Epic's. GoW is an excellent game that would have done very well had it been released on PC at the same time as 360. They waited a year and in the meantime half of the people who would have played it on PC just sucked it up and got a 360, the other half were hardcore PC gamers who laughed at the game when they heard about mandatory Live Gold to play ranked matches and the lack of dedicated servers. UT3 is complete junk and they should consider themselves lucky they managed to sell 100k in the first month, did Cliffy actually expect UT3 was entitled to success when we have muhc better alternatives like COD4 and TF2? Epic doesn't know how to make good PC games anymore and in usual Epic form instead of admitting mistakes they blame everyone but themselves.
 
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