Is the game industry trying to kill off PC gaming?

L31mr0d

Ok, i'm currently playing through stranglehold, and have had 4 or 5 BSOD's already and game freezes. I thought it was the fact i've been overclocking a lot and maybe it was some of my BIOS settings causing the problem.

But I did a quick google search and supposedly a lot of people playing this game on the PC are experiencing the same issue.

This is coming off the back of the relentlessly buggy Bioshock, which would also crash to the desktop or force a hard reset.

In fact I can't remember the last game thats been released in the last few years that hasn't needed to be patched to fix problems that should of been sorted in its beta stage.

More and more i'm beginning to think the games industry views PC gamers as their beta testers and nothing more.

On top of this, they are releasing games that are at least (and I use this liberally) about 6 months ahead of the current average top end hardware. To fully see a game as it was meant to be played on the PC you'll need to be investing in the latest hardware as its released. Some recent examples are WiC and the Call of Juarez (DX10 edition)

So you couple the expensive cost of PC gaming with the sub standard beta software, do you think the games is industry trying to push people towards console gaming to save on the headache?

Or are these companies just that bad in making games run without needing them to be patched ad nauseum.

Sidane

I've been a PC gamer since I was a kid playing Ultima 5 and Elite on an archaic 386. I've been very much against buying into the whole console 'revolution' over the last 5 years or so. I've always been of the belief that PC games are always superior - better graphics, more innovative, better gameplay, better controls (keyboard/mouse > console controller) etc.

However, over the last few months I've just become fed up with the never ending hardware upgrade cycle and the ever increasing number of console exclusive games. There are several games coming out that I want to play but they are XBox only (Mass Effect, Halo 3, GTA IV to name a few).

Finally, seeing my PC struggle badly to play the Bioshock demo I decided enough was enough - I bought an XBox 360 and to be honest I'm really enjoying it.

I'll still play games on the PC but it's likely to primarily be RTS style games where a keyboard & mouse is essential.

So all in all I tend to agree - the industry is very much moving towards being primarily console driven. It's a shame and a few months ago I would have been very negative about it, but now, I'm starting to change my tune...

tman

My experience has been the total opposite, I can't remember having any issues with a new release pc game in the past few years, certainly nothing that has made the game unplayable without a patch anyway...
Bioshock didn't crash once for me, and even the beta of TF2 has been a problem free experience after they patched it on Wednesday.

And as for constantly upgrading, it can be a pain in the ass, but you can't beat the satisfaction of running a new release with everything maxxed out...

KdjaCL

MOHA bioshock and quakewars all play perfectly on my system i would go the other way and say games are more compatible



kdjac

Call Me Jimmy

I rarely have problems with pc games, I can't remember the last time I did.

But I think that it is so much harder for developers to make games for pc because there are so many combinations of hardware - old and new - and their time is stretched enough in just making the game let alone getting it to work for every hardware combination in the world.

jesus_thats_gre

Software compaines seem to make more money from console sales. So it would make sense they would put more effort into the console versions of games.

cosgrove80

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Software compaines seem to make more money from console sales. So it would make sense they would put more effort into the console versions of games.

Hasn't it got to the stage now though, where a lot of the games are running on the same engine / middleware (Unreal 3 etc.) and therefore a large portion of development would be done in tandem for both the PC and console versions?

At the moment anyway it just seems like they throw on some fancy DX10 effects in the PC versions.

jesus_thats_gre

cosgrove80 wrote:

Hasn't it got to the stage now though, where a lot of the games are running on the same engine / middleware (Unreal 3 etc.) and therefore a large portion of development would be done in tandem for both the PC and console versions?

At the moment anyway it just seems like they throw on some fancy DX10 effects in the PC versions.

Yeah fair point alright but that is assuming that they are using a ready made solution that has been tested for scalability on various PC hardware. Alot of games are still based on in house engines and developing and testing that stuff on a closed hardware set is alot cheaper.

humanji

I do get the sense that a lot of PC games just aren't finished when released. I can't remember the last time I installed a game and didn't have to instantly download a patch for it. It's like they've all decided that the "it'll be done when it's done" motto isn't working and they're just deciding on release dates before they even start making the games.

Timans

I hope so.

Bloody geeks.

KdjaCL

humanji wrote:

I do get the sense that a lot of PC games just aren't finished when released. I can't remember the last time I installed a game and didn't have to instantly download a patch for it. It's like they've all decided that the "it'll be done when it's done" motto isn't working and they're just deciding on release dates before they even start making the games.

3 games i said above all work perfectly without a patch 2 are unreal and other ID.

kdjac

Creamy Goodness

humanji wrote:

I do get the sense that a lot of PC games just aren't finished when released. I can't remember the last time I installed a game and didn't have to instantly download a patch for it. It's like they've all decided that the "it'll be done when it's done" motto isn't working and they're just deciding on release dates before they even start making the games.

console games are getting like this as well having patches for consoles in my book screams lazy testing to me.

every console has the exact same parts in it without exception.

whereas a pc has hundreds of parts that can be manufactured by hundreds of manufacturers and be in any combination of these parts.

PC patching is more forgivable than console patching.

Mr. Presentable

Haven't had a problem with a PC game in years. That may be down to luck, or it may be down to the fact that I keep my PC in good health, latest drivers etc, even if not the latest gfx card etc.

Consoles are always going to be easier to design for when the setup is the same across the board for five or so years. Remember, for a game to run on PC it has to be compatible with thousands of hardware permutations, constantly evolving. In fact, it's astounding they work at all, really....

4Xcut

personally i think it's the fault of good broadband. this allows games companies to leave out bits and just throw out a patch and leave it for people to download. laziness in my opinion and a lack of pride in one's work.

projectmayhem

this isn't really developers who are mucking up the experience, it's publishers. they know the money is made in consoles, so the 3 or 4 months allocated to QA at the end of the development cycle is almost entirely dedicated to the 360, ps3 or wii, while PC might get two weeks worth of quick playthroughs where the only reported bugs are crashes.

it's absolutely true that PC games are, at this stage, an afterthought. the money isn't there anymore. the fact that PC loyalists iD and Valve (and other such companies) have gone to consoles with their latest products speaks volumes, despite being fairly vocal in the past about their lack of love for the machines.

microsoft were to be the saviours with Vista, with an actual PC gaming platform (games for windows) which would actually pump money into the developers to make PC games. instead of actually following through with the idea, Microsoft used it as an avenue to get developers/publishers to publish games on 360 exclusively without having to buy more development studios (ref: bioshock).

so basically the PC market has been thrown to the back seat by microsoft and the major publishing houses.

steviec

4Xcut wrote:

personally i think it's the fault of good broadband. this allows games companies to leave out bits and just throw out a patch and leave it for people to download. laziness in my opinion and a lack of pride in one's work.

That's quite insulting to developers who I can assure you are very hard working.

The problem with PC games is that developers are shooting at a moving target. It's just not possible to test with every hardware combination out there. Not to mention all the different drivers and background programs and everything else going on. It's just easier to make a solid, stable console game. If it works on the 360s in the office, it will work on user's 360s at home. You just can't be 100% sure of that with PCs.

It is of course compounded by the fact that there's less money in the PC market. PC games won't sell as well, are more likely to be pirated and aren't as profitable as their console counterparts. As such there simply won't be as many staff assigned to them for as long a period, because it's inaffordable. It doesn't mean those staff are lazy - try googling 'EA spouse' to see just how much effort some developers are forced to put in.

AntiVirus

KdjaCL wrote:

MOHA bioshock and quakewars all play perfectly on my system i would go the other way and say games are more compatible

kdjac

All those games work without ever crashing for me on Vista 64. The only game that I've had a lot of crashes with was Stalker.

jesus_thats_gre

4Xcut wrote:

personally i think it's the fault of good broadband. this allows games companies to leave out bits and just throw out a patch and leave it for people to download. laziness in my opinion and a lack of pride in one's work.

Was gonna say this myself. The fact that a large proportion of Pc gamers have broadband is a major factor in this laziness.

L31mr0d

KdjaCL wrote:

3 games i said above all work perfectly without a patch 2 are unreal and other ID.

kdjac

Well you only have to google "Bioshock crashing" to see i'm not alone with this. You might be lucky in that it didn't happen to you, but I know of a couple of friends personally who are experiencing the same issue on PC's ranging from laptop, DELLs to my own home built, they have all had game crashes and freezes. The only guy that was laughing was the guy playing it on his console

The last game I can remember playing through without a hitch was HL2. Since then the standard of games, imo, has been going downhill.

The first thing I do whenever I get a game is to check on the net for patchs, and without a doubt there will always be one, fixing some glitch or memory leak or any of 100 other problems. Maybe its because I play a lot of games, or play a lot of games from a lot of different developers but i've been seeing more and more technical faults in games lately. Also i'm on a lot of gaming forums and its become the norm now for complaints about games to crop up within the first week of release. I usually give a game release a couple of weeks now because of this, to wait for a plethora of patchs to get sent out, so I don't have to suffer through having my gameplay interrupted.

0ubliette

It certainly seems that PC gaming is being put on the back burner by developers, and lets face it the number one reason is money. PC games are just too easily pirated for the platform to be a viable market for making money. The second a game is released nowadays you can find it on the pirate bay...consoles are alot harder to pirate so are a more viable option, so at the end of the day, like back in the days of the atari st/amiga, the machines died because companies couldnt make money off them, noone bought games anymore when they could just copy them.
Ive never pirated any game, not because im a self righteous bastard, but cause at the end of the day it really does harm the industry, and i dont have a problem forking out 50 euro for a game like bioshock thats already given me hours of fun.

I got a new Toshiba laptop a week back and playing some games is an absolute pain. HL2 is sluggish beyond belief, Bioshock keeps freezing, Tranformers has crashed to the desktop on a number of ocassions. The only game which has so far worked as well as i had hoped is World in Conflict.

Maximilian

I think the suggestion that the industry is trying to kill PC gaming is bordering on paranoia. Look at all the highly successful and profitable games that exist for the PC only, some of which could only work on a PC (Um... WoW anyone?). There will always be a place for PC games I think for the foreseeable future; for as long as there is demand for them. Also, as the industry goes towards download delivery, the margins will surely exceed those for console games. I wonder how much of the price for the Steam version of Half-Life 2 was profit?

Lazy ports from consoles are frustrating but its nothing new. Its not so long ago there were lazy ports from Amiga to Atari ST and vice versa.

Stephen

Darko: Your laptop most have some kind of rubbish integrated graphics card then, considering Half-Life 2 is a 3 year old game that ran very well on the hardware of the day when it was released.

mcgovern

Maximilian wrote:

I think the suggestion that the industry is trying to kill PC gaming is bordering on paranoia. Look at all the highly successful and profitable games that exist for the PC only, some of which could only work on a PC (Um... WoW anyone?). There will always be a place for PC games I think for the foreseeable future; for as long as there is demand for them. Also, as the industry goes towards download delivery, the margins will surely exceed those for console games. I wonder how much of the price for the Steam version of Half-Life 2 was profit?

Lazy ports from consoles are frustrating but its nothing new. Its not so long ago there were lazy ports from Amiga to Atari ST and vice versa.

Do you know anything about Console gaming? There is no reason WoW couldn't be played on a console and there have even been rumours that it will be released on them soon.
Downloading games online without a disk is also something that you can do on consoles. PSN already has full games available for download and Xbox Live has the capability to release more than arcade games.

Stephen

Stephen wrote:

Darko: Your laptop most have some kind of rubbish integrated graphics card then, considering Half-Life 2 is a 3 year old game that ran very well on the hardware of the day when it was released.

It's not the graphics card, it plays World in Conflict with all the video options turned up and Bioshock on high. I've heard a lot of people are having the same problem. It runs HL2, graphics set to highest, but gameplay is sluggish.

Sorted my Bioshock problem there. Wiped my harddrive, reinstalled Vistas and updated all the drivers. Did'nt freeze once during an hours of plaaying.

petes

Deleted User wrote:

It's not the graphics card, it plays World in Conflict with all the video options turned up and Bioshock on high. I've heard a lot of people are having the same problem. It runs HL2, graphics set to highest, but gameplay is sluggish.

Sorted my Bioshock problem there. Wiped my harddrive, reinstalled Vistas and updated all the drivers. Did'nt freeze once during an hours of plaaying.

What graphics card is in it?

nice1franko

The industry isn't trying to "kill off" pc gaming, it's just that the PC platform is less attractive now.

The development -> QA -> development cycle for pc games is more costly because of the multitude of hardware configurations to test on. Also, as mentioned, piracy on consoles isn't as big of a problem.

It just makes good business sense to reap the lower hanging fruit.

the_syco

Deleted User wrote:

I got a new Toshiba laptop a week back and playing some games is an absolute pain.

What was the graphics card? If you say integrated, you need a slap. If it's an integrated Intel, you need slaps.

=-=

Oh, and how many console games don't use a PC-game engine?

the_syco

the_syco wrote:

What was the graphics card? If you say integrated, you need a slap. If it's an integrated Intel, you need slaps.

Sweet Jesus no, it's a NVIDIA GeForce 7300.

gizmo

Q: Is the game industry trying to kill off PC gaming?
A: No.

Now more than ever the whole PC vs Console gaming issue is going to get more interesting. Thanks to the new generation of consoles, development costs have spiraled and smaller developers are finding it harder and harder to raise the necessary funding to complete development. Even the larger houses have admitted that it's becoming a problem. Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, even came our recently and announced that they've started sharing art assests between studios because the time and expense required to produce them is too heavy a burden. Now, so with these kinds of costs what do publishers have to do? Release it across various platforms. You then have the above situations where PC versions are released and they seem incomplete. This is due to a number of reasons...

- QA costs being significantly higher for the PC versions than the console versions.
- Console sales being higher than PC versions
- PC games being easier to patch than console games.

The last point may piss alot of people off but if a publisher is putting pressure on a developer to get a title out the door then they will more than likely concentrate on the version which is more difficult to patch, and as such must be as close to perfect as possible, rather than one which they know they can patch up down the line.

Despite all this though the PC as a platform is as strong as ever, one needs to only look at the upcoming releases to see some top games out at the moment and coming soon. Yes the consoles have a few exclusives but then again, so do we.

Maximilian

mcgovern wrote:

Do you know anything about Console gaming? There is no reason WoW couldn't be played on a console and there have even been rumours that it will be released on them soon.
Downloading games online without a disk is also something that you can do on consoles. PSN already has full games available for download and Xbox Live has the capability to release more than arcade games.

No, I don't know too much about them, as consoles are for children and people who can't afford PC's. As for WoW on a console - I promise you I will purchase and eat a hat of your chooising should this ever happen.

Eg:

From http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/15-01-2007-4497.html

A Blizzard developer has suggested massively popular MMO World of Warcraft would not translate well to the Nintendo Wii.

Speaking to Pro-G at the launch of the game's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, Blizzard game designer Jonathan LeCraft said using the Wii Remote wouldn't work with the PC hit.

No ****.

KdjaCL

L31mr0d wrote:

Well you only have to google "Bioshock crashing" to see i'm not alone with this. You might be lucky in that it didn't happen to you, but I know of a couple of friends personally who are experiencing the same issue on PC's ranging from laptop, DELLs to my own home built, they have all had game crashes and freezes. The only guy that was laughing was the guy playing it on his console

I am afraid to turn on my xbox in case i get 3 red lights and pro evo out soon, every game i have has glitches that make the game unplayable i think of it as time controlled gaming, i play as long as the 360 lets me.

google "xbox crashing" bet it wins vs "bioshock crashing" in a googlefight


kdjac

projectmayhem

KdjaCL wrote:

I am afraid to turn on my xbox in case i get 3 red lights and pro evo out soon, every game i have has glitches that make the game unplayable i think of it as time controlled gaming, i play as long as the 360 lets me.

google "xbox crashing" bet it wins vs "bioshock crashing" in a googlefight


kdjac

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=bioshock+crash&word2=xbox+crash

L31mr0d

KdjaCL wrote:

I am afraid to turn on my xbox in case i get 3 red lights and pro evo out soon, every game i have has glitches that make the game unplayable i think of it as time controlled gaming, i play as long as the 360 lets me.

google "xbox crashing" bet it wins vs "bioshock crashing" in a googlefight


kdjac

lets call apples apples here shall we. The problem you are talking about is due to poor hardware design NOT bad software design, which is what we are discussing.

Aaron M

Maximilian wrote:

No, I don't know too much about them, as consoles are for children and people who can't afford PC's.

It's obvious you don't know much about anything with a comment like that.

Maximilian wrote:

As for WoW on a console - I promise you I will purchase and eat a hat of your chooising should this ever happen.

It's only a matter of time before MMO's of one form or another hit the console arena. It's not a question of if, it's only a question of when.

Maximilian

Aaron M wrote:

It's obvious you don't know much about anything with a comment like that.



It's only a matter of time before MMO's of one form or another hit the console arena. It's not a question of if, it's only a question of when.

Baiting ftw!

humanji

Maximilian wrote:

Baiting ftw!

lol

mcgovern

Maximilian wrote:

No, I don't know too much about them, as consoles are for children and people who can't afford PC's. As for WoW on a console - I promise you I will purchase and eat a hat of your chooising should this ever happen.

Eg:

From http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/15-01-2007-4497.html



No ****.

I have a ~3 month old PC and I think the only kid in this thread is you, Mr. Fanboi.
There are already MMOs on consoles. Obviously the Wii would not be a good choice for a game like WoW, but its not meant for that type of game.
The PS3 and 360 are more than a match for it and could run it in their sleep.

Maximilian

Jesus, has nobody a sense of humour? Am I the only one who thought that Wii quote funny? I have a 360 FYI - I use it as an expensive mp3 player hooked up to my TV. The HD-DVD player is nice though. My PC is easily better for gaming, I don't give a crap what anyone says.

Dustaz

Azeroth is now the 90th most populated country in the world and people are paying a tenner a month to live there.

the Wii has attracted more new gamers than everything else put together in the last 10 years (nb, i completely made that up, but its pretty much the truth.)


Put these two together and you have the future of gaming. both pc and console.

There will always be room for both and their completely seperate gaing ideologies. PC's will always offer more in-depth and emergent gameplay while consoles will always offer quick easy and hassle free gaming.

gizmo

As for EPIC's take on the sitation...

The reason [that crossplatform play between PC and PS3 will not ship with the title is], according to Mark Rein from Epic, was that it takes much longer to get a console build up and running because of lengthy certification processes - a problem also experienced by patches.

Synchronising the two, then, would mean constantly holding back PC users so the PS3 could catch up. This wasn't an option Mark Rein and his can of soda liked.

"Our PC fan base is of ultimate importance to us. They are our bread and butter. We can't let them down or compromise their experience in any way to accommodate cross-platform play," insisted Rein.

Creamy Goodness

pity the dev's of deus ex2 didn't have epic's take on this situation.

Naikon

L31mr0d wrote:

The last game I can remember playing through without a hitch was HL2. Since then the standard of games, imo, has been going downhill.

You have got to be kidding;)
Half life 2 upon release was diabolical to an extent.

Great game no doubt, but the combination of so much hype, and that horrible "stuttering" bug which was a big flaw in the caching system used for pre-caching sound data(or lack of) ruined it somewhat.
I remember building a new system for that game, so my PC wasn't at fault really.
I also remember some dude on the steam forums released a workaround a few weeks/months later whereby the user had to manually load sound files during play, which instantly solved the problem.

That stutter bug wasn't fixed for nearly two years, and alas when Vavle brought out the friends beta patch it suddenly fixed the bugs.
We need another innovation game like the original half-life or Deus Ex.

Naikon

Cremo wrote:

pity the dev's of deus ex2 didn't have epic's take on this situation.

QFT, and Deus Ex 3 doesn't sound too good either without Warren Spector:(

Creamy Goodness

i agree naikon, the stuttering thing was fairly annoying. but half-life2 was one of the first games on steam where there was a huge rush for it and was also the first major game released on steam.

since then steam has gotten much much better but it did take half-life2 to figure out these flaws.

i may not entirely agree with valve all the time (ala counter-strike) but they have built a great content delivery system in steam.

Naikon wrote:

QFT, and Deus Ex 3 doesn't sound too good either without Warren Spector:(

lol hadn't read that, that's just rediculous it would be like the bible without Jesus in it.

Naikon

Cremo wrote:

lol hadn't read that, that's just rediculous it would be like the bible without Jesus in it.

Yeah, they have cleaned things up nicely since then I admit.
The super id software pack for example is a very nice through steam.
Mind you, scaling the res in some games to 1280x1024 can be troublesome considering the age of some games.

here is the link for "Dues ex" 3 for any interested party:D

http://pc.ign.com/articles/789/789321p1.html

gizmo

Cremo wrote:

pity the dev's of deus ex2 didn't have epic's take on this situation.

Still attempting to play through that at the minute but not matter how hard I try I can't seem to give a damn about the characters or the story. Don't even get me started on the consolistion of the game though. :mad:

Dacelonid

tman wrote:

My experience has been the total opposite, I can't remember having any issues with a new release pc game in the past few years, certainly nothing that has made the game unplayable without a patch anyway...
Bioshock didn't crash once for me, and even the beta of TF2 has been a problem free experience after they patched it on Wednesday.

And as for constantly upgrading, it can be a pain in the ass, but you can't beat the satisfaction of running a new release with everything maxxed out...

Same here, I can't actually remember once buying a game and having issues with it. The only time I can remember buying a game and not being able to play it was when I got FEAR. Had to buy a new machine to play that one.
Other than that, every game I bought has worked straight out of the box.

Benzino

According to an analyst(:rolleyes: ): "The PC game business is expected to grow over 80 percent over the next five years."

source

KdjaCL

Bought Quake wars and it wont work

I should have said nothing


kdjac

CyberGhost

KdjaCL wrote:

Bought Quake wars and it wont work

I should have said nothing


kdjac

LOL ^




Console market is more profitable, and it's less hassle and it's less risky(piracy wise)

It's only natural the develepers will switch, I don't remember but it might have been the same when PS2/Xbox came out, but once PC substantially surpasses consoles yet again, we'll see more quality titles and less ports too.