PC Developers Aiming Too High?

[Nathan Meunier]

PC Developers Aiming Too High?

PC gaming may be alive and well, but Company of Heroes [] senior producer Tim Holman believes some developers are shooting themselves in the foot.

Holman thinks developers should make games [http://www.edge-online.com/news/pc-devs-shoot-themselves-in-foot] with more accessible system requirements, instead of titles that run like a slideshow on all but the highest-end computer rigs. Indeed, most serious PC gamers are stuck pouring their hard-earned cash into yearly hardware upgrades that could instead be spent on buying new games. It's even worse when a solid gaming computer already costs well more than double the price of the latest gaming consoles.

"I think one of the things that hurt PC gaming is PC developers," said Holman, speaking to Edge [http://www.edge-online.com/magazine]. "If you make a game with such high-end requirements that only people with a $6,000 PC can play it at a decent framerate, of course your sales are going to drop."

Players are not going to want to invest in games until they are able to test them out to ensure they run decently on their machines, he said. This spurs them to pirate games, causing more problems for publishers. "I think PC developers shoot themselves in the foot to a large degree," he said. "A lot of companies are guilty of that."



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[TsunamiWombat]

OMG! LOGIC!? Madness! This is madness and so not Sparta!

How dare he insinuate developers making crappy games with higher and higher requirements is causing piracy! Clearly it's because all PC gamers are thieves (ask CliffyB), ignorant (ask the director of EA), or because PC Gaming is dying (ask any stupid game pundit ever)!

Satire aside...I have only this to say.

O RLLY?

 

[jamesworkshop]

Left 4 dead, portal, every half life, diablo 3, word of warcraft, farcry 2, guildwars, the sims, spore, COD5 world at war.
Excatly where and how often do games push the hardware not very often, crysis is the only game where 3 gtx280 are required to hit 60 average frames on the highest settings, developers are very well aware that steep requirements is not a sound business strategy it's how blizzard became so huge and Valve to run its own download Steam service.

Computers won't become as cheap as consoles as the hardware is sold for a profit whereas the console hardware and software is owned by one company (microsoft,sony,nintendo) and thus sell the console for a discounted price well except for the nintendo Wii but also note it is the cheapest of all the 7th gen consoles.
Gaming computers are becoming cheaper every year the £110 ATi HD 4850 is offering massive gaming performance lets take farcry 2 a new game

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/images/articles/1224567052wrBXF0KsTr_1_2.gif

Lets see highest in game settings Dx.10 and at the highest resolution of any comercially produced monitor (£1000+) at 30 FPS Average.
3 years ago no £110 graphics card could do anything even close (comparitivly) to what the 4850 is currently doing, simple fact is improvments in the manufacturing capabilties and number of new facilitys as well as very intense competiton between a lot of big companies is driving down PC prices and it is reaching the consumer level.
DDR2 for instance is as cheap as chips £18 for a gig of ram I mean seriously who cares if it fails its as cheap and replacable as the DVD drive.
Piracy is growing because more people are playing games and P2P and thepiratebay are easily accesable whereas before piracy was limited to the cracking scene (by the scene, for the scene)

 

[Dectilon]

Not like we haven't heard this before...

I'd say things are fine as far as system requirements go. Game development will keep pushing technology forward, which is good, and Blizzard will get all of our money to make sc2 awesome.

win-win. (okay, I'm exaggerating but...)

 

[SaintWaldo]

AoC and WoWH, I'm looking right at you after reading this article.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Hey, he gets it.

This is why I don't PC game.

 

[Rosscifer]

Exaggerate much? Even Crysis ran great on my 1 grand machine. There's clealy a market for low requirements games and for high requirements games.

 

[Vampire_Hermes]

The problem I have with PC-gaming is that you have to worry about this stuff at all. Games with stated 'minimum specs' rarely run in any playable way at those specs. I'm totally unwilling to pour money into my perfectly usable PC. It doesn't need updating. The Sims, for example. I'm a big fan of the series, but if the third installment surpasses my system's abilities, I'll just leave it.

I like consoles because everything you buy for a console works out of the box. Plug it in, put in the disk and you're off. I won't spend all my time designing a gaming computer, and all my money building it when they come pre-built with controllers and a game that is guaranteed to work at its best.

There's very little advantage to PC gaming, IMO, save custom-made content. Frankly, I don't see that as worth the effort (or money).

 

[forever saturday]

this is why i play mostly console games. i think that although a console might not be able to keep up with what pcs can put out after a while, at least when i buy a wii game i can be sure that it will work with my wii. with a pc game i have to check the requirements before i buy because i dont want to buy something and find out that my pc cant run it. i also think that using a keyboard is pretty hard, but thats not really the point.

 

[stompy]

The man speaks the truth. However, for many developers, the truth is over-rated.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

I agree, although a lot of games are already pretty flexible. My PC and hardware is terribly dated, but when I play games like Spore or Portal on low quality they run perfectly.

 

[Echolocating]

Truth be told, I like PC gaming more, but I keep flip-flopping back and forth because I simply can't afford to keep upgrading the beast. It hungers for more RAM and a faster video card... I even heard it grumbling about wanting a RAID 0 with two 10,000 RPM Raptor drives.

 

[Dectilon]

Truth be told, I like PC gaming more, but I keep flip-flopping back and forth because I simply can't afford to keep upgrading the beast. It hungers for more RAM and a faster video card... I even heard it grumbling about wanting a RAID 0 with two 10,000 RPM Raptor drives.

Fortunately there's no need to take sides. It's a purely artficial conflict : P

He has a point though. This computer I'm using was top-of-the-range seven months ago, but now can't keep up with games. It's already outdated, and that saddens me.

My computer is two years old and it wasn't even top-of-the-range then and most of everything runs fine. Maybe not on the highest settings, but that hardly counts. It's not like you're getting as good graphics as is possible with the best PC on any of the gaming consoles.

 

[johnman]

Woah whats with all the ignoranace!
My computer is mid range to say the best, cost £600 and runs crysis on hihg very nicely. Updating your hardware ever 3 months? take a reality check. I wont have to touch mine for another 2 years at least and its already a year and a half old. I dont have to worry about minium specs as i know my machine is good enough. A well built machine takes all your arguments and shits on them from a great height

 

[rougeknife]

Woah whats with all the ignoranace!
My computer is mid range to say the best, cost £600 and runs crysis on hihg very nicely. Updating your hardware ever 3 months? take a reality check. I wont have to touch mine for another 2 years at least and its already a year and a half old. I dont have to worry about minium specs as i know my machine is good enough. A well built machine takes all your arguments and shits on them from a great height

QFT

I get a new rig roughly every two and a half to three years, forking out 1000-2000AU on the case and its innards, usually keeping other items (though I did grab a nice 22" for this baby)

From time to time I might change a card around, but thats very rare, I only did it on my last rig because the old one carked it one morning.

My current rig was purchased in April and has since been running everything on high no worries, and will for quite some time. Update every three months? What the fuck are you smoking? Are you upgrading the the 2000 Gateway or some shit with parts you found in the bargain bin?

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Oh man...what I would do with a $6,000 dollar PC...