Destiny Won't Launch on PC Because it Would be Too Much Work

[The Lunatic]

Given PCs are making a higher revenue than the consoles, it seems like a bad idea to cut out over 50% of your potential revenue because you're being lazy.

 

[weirdee]

Side note on Oni: they effed up the PS2 controls pretty badly, but the PC one worked fine.

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

The entire thing is moot since almost all of their data comes from NPD analytics.

The NPD is notorious for constantly playing catchup (and often failing to do so) with the industry. In fact, they only recently started tracking digital sales. And even then their analysis is limited.

As such, it's relatively safe to say that the vast majority of the data within that analysis is simply incomplete. Especially in terms of PC sales.

Many of the conclusions could be right. But I'd wager just as many are not.

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Anyway, on topic:

And thus the final nail in the coffin for any interest I may have had in Destiny is driven home.

Oh well. To be honest the game looked less and less interesting the more I learned of it. And the more I see of it the more it looks like Bungie is just riffing on their own previous series.

 

[ecoho]

well, he claims that the problem is not the porting but the bug-testing, so at least he claims hes taking the bug testing seriuosly, which is.... refreshingly honest.
On the other hand, your taking your time to test it on the dreadful PS3 system and life support Eggsbox 360 and you cant do it on PC? How about dropping the obsolete platforms instead of the leaders?

Though Bungie, as a "Hardcore PC fans" you should know that the reason PC people will hate you is that you delayed the launch for the main platform.

Shooters are actually a lot more popular on console than PC, at least in the US. Nearly 3 times more popular on consoles even. The PC market is pretty dominated by strategy games, then casual (possibly indie?) games and then RPGs. Shooter are on level with Action-Adventure for the PC. (Surprisingly they're not the most popular genre on consoles either. That goes to Action-Adventure, but at console shooters still take up 20% of the market)

the report takes only last year sales. On PC you dont have to buy new COD every year. we still play COD4 (the best one), CS (all versions), TF2, Blacklight Rettribution, Planetside, ect that simply got ommited. COnsidering that PC shooter tournaments have up to 100 times higher audience/participation i have heavy doubts about it being more popular on consoles. Not to mentino that ESA is using retailers and steam does not disclose its numbers, which is why pretty much any site reporting on sales on PC under-report it.

That's a charitable estimate. I don't even think most people know anything about this besides "from the makers of halo!"

the trailers look cook. emphasis on "look". as in i expect graphics to be all there is to this game.

Why are people offended by this as if Bungie was giving the finger to each PC gamer personally? Seems like there's a myth going around that programmers work a day then take the week off. It makes absolutely no sense to say they're just being lazy. Game makers are hourly like the rest of us, and in a way it doesn't matter to them how much content is in the game. They're not putting it on PC so it can come out to their main audience at a more reasonable date and so they can focus on making it stable on a few platforms.

by not realeasing a game on PC meanwhile keeping up the life support on Eggsbox360 and PS3 they ARE giving the finger to every PC gamer.
And main market? PC IS the main market for FPS and MMO.

ok guys first rule of getting a PC version of a game don't ***** because you get it later, lets face it your the tougher crowed. if the game doesn't have FOV sliders and only runs at 60fps it would be (rightly) lynched by the PC community, so give them a reasonable amount of time to bring out a port and if they screw it up or don't do one after say 5 months of no news THEN you rip them a new one(that's 5 months after it releases on consoles).

Just because there are people that will gladgly eat shit does not mean that people who refuse to do so are "tough crowd". FOV sliders or at least decent (read: minimum 90) FOV should be mandatory for ANY game on ANY platform. Oh, and 60 FPS is the standart for PCs now so we wont complain if it runs like that. You know, these kind of graphical options that are asked by PC community gets modded into games in a matter of hours when its missing right? A single guy does it in couple hours, for free. and they have huge budgets and whole teams and cant do that? Oh, please.

And no, there is no reason why a PC version should be late (and not a PC port, PC version, because ports are just bad on any platform (remember oblivion on PS3?)).

PC is the lowest in playerbase, lowest in profit(games sell for less), and as you have proven are a harder sell then consoles. face it man all this bitching is just proving them right by excluding the PC market.

Currently there are more players online in World of Tanks then people have bought the PS4. Add League of Legends (similar) and WoW and DOTA 2 and now you have more people playing 4 games then there are sold 8th generation consoles.
Actually, face it.
PC is one platform and it is matching 2-4 others in number of players. Maybe even surpass them
It is one platform and it prints a lot of money.
It is one platform and it is the most profitable single platform

ok I see a pretty big flaw in that logic, all those games don't require high end computers to play and there is a good chance all those players own a console. Now take into account that most people who own PCs on the low end don't know how to upgrade their computers so in order to play a new game that outstrips theirs even at a little bit they'll have to buy a new one. This leads to them weighing a $600+ pc to a $60 game for their console, sure it wont look as good but they don't have to buy a new PC.

Now I want to make this clear so I don't get attacked again I am a PC gamer I just understand were we as a community stand. We are seen as whiny and ungrateful to most devs due to the mass bitching the vocal minority does so the best thing we can do is say nothing and not buy the game if its a shitty port. Use your wallets not your words that will send a much better message then bashing a game on a forum.

 

[LordDPS]

You know, I'm finding it interesting that this is the same exact excuse that the guys at CD Projeckt is using NOT to port Witcher 3.

But they are. The game will launch on Xbox 1 and Ps4 alongside the PC version.

 

[Platypus540]

I don't understand why everyone is so angry about this. Bungie has never been much for PC (at least not for a long time) and neither has Activision, so it's not like anyone was expecting a PC version.

Also, programming is a lot of work. If they say it's too much work to make a PC port, it's probably too much damn work. No reason to delay release just to satisfy users of a platform they don't focus on anyway.

 

[Vigormortis]

PC is the lowest in playerbase, lowest in profit(games sell for less), and as you have proven are a harder sell then consoles. face it man all this bitching is just proving them right by excluding the PC market.

You DO realize that all of these assertions are absolute bullshit, right?

The number of PC gamers worldwide likely outnumbers all current console player bases combined. Hell, just the number of currently active accounts on Steam outnumbers the total for the PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 combined. And this doesn't even take into account Origin, Uplay, GoG, GMG, and other player bases.

As for profit -
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/pc-games-have-surpassed-console-games-globally/033849
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134037-Analyst-PC-Has-Surpassed-Console-in-Terms-of-Revenue

To sum up:
Despite your condescending opinion of PC gamers, it's not our "bitching" that's preventing Destiny from coming to PC. It's the ignorance of Bungie and Activision that are preventing it.

In fact, I'd wager this is primarily Activision's doing - given how anti-PC they are.

Not that i care about this game or bungie in general but a team of "hardcore" pc gamers not publishing something to the PC just sounds weird i guess

Glad to see I wasn't the only one to notice this contradiction.

"We love PC gaming! Just not enough to bring our new, flagship title to it."

They'd have to put the crosshair in the middle of the screen, i'm not sure bungie knows how to do that anymore.

Bungie's next game will have the crosshair so low that pressing the trigger will result in your character shooting his own foot.

 

[Evonisia]

Obligatory "it's launching on Xbox One and PS4, but not PC, lol" comment.

I was planning to get it on the One anyway, for the record, so it just comes off as a lazy catering to people like me. I couldn't care less, Bungie, especially since it's been five years since you're last relatively good game.

Are you talking about Halo: Reach? Because to be fair, it's also been about 5 years since Bungie released a game at all, and that was Reach.

It's been nearly four since Reach came out, but I was referring to ODST (five years this September). Admittedly that's an expansion pack but I still feel like it added more stuff (excluding easter eggs) than 3 did.

 

[Strazdas]

This is probably a novel concept, but a big company that moves a lot of money usually have actuaries and other money/risk associated people. Those people probably have more experience and know-how then a forum full of crybabies. Let them do their job and learn to deal with your insecurities.

Step 1: look at big gaming industry history for the last 10 years.
Step 2: completely disregard what you just said.

Because everything since 2004 (or possibly earlier) was just one big mistake after another. Devil May Cry 3, Metal Gear Solid 3, and everything else were just a bunch of fuck ups. I'd try to remember that, but I'm not as narrow-minded as you or many others who post here.

cherry picking a few examples that do not represent big gaming industry overall is not a way to defeat my argument.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Obligatory "it's launching on Xbox One and PS4, but not PC, lol" comment.

I was planning to get it on the One anyway, for the record, so it just comes off as a lazy catering to people like me. I couldn't care less, Bungie, especially since it's been five years since you're last relatively good game.

Are you talking about Halo: Reach? Because to be fair, it's also been about 5 years since Bungie released a game at all, and that was Reach.

It's been nearly four since Reach came out, but I was referring to ODST (five years this September). Admittedly that's an expansion pack but I still feel like it added more stuff (excluding easter eggs) than 3 did.

Ah, thought that Reach was 2009. My bad.

Not a fan of Reach then, eh?

 

[JET1971]

Lazy lazy lazy excuse to not launch for PC alongside the console ports.

I imagine that AAA developers are deciding to at least stagger pc launches nowadays to encourage early console adoption which has a significantly lower rate of piracy than PC ips. If that's the case then we'll need to get used to hearing insanely bogus excuses like this one.

Ever visit a torrent site? more 360 versions of the same game and DLC than PC versions is quite common. When multiplatform games has piracy numbers posted those numbers are not just PC so try not to be misled into thinking that all those downloads are PC only.

 

[Batou667]

The more I see of Destiny, the less I care about it. Which is sad, but from the posts in this thread I seem to be in the majority.

It's weird. This game looks gorgeous. The market is wide open for a decent co-op experience. Cross-console multiplayer is rare enough, having 4 consoles supported should be commendable. And "scifi-fantasy" (read: space opera) has never really gone out of fashion since Star Wars. So why does Destiny feel so soulless and less than the sum of its parts?

I don't know. What if Bungie turned out to not be a particularly good studio (the Marathon series wasn't that noteworthy, after all), and Halo was them getting ridiculously lucky? Certainly, Destiny seems to have abandoned or lost a lot of the things that made Halo great. Poor character design. A convoluted and seemingly shallow story. A cluttered HUD. Forgettable weapon design. Also, an incongruous mix of real-world sensibilities and self-indulgent design flourishes, which perhaps we already started seeing in the different direction Halo 4 took compared to the Flood trilogy. Overall it just seems so... so safe, so cliche, so thoroughly over-familiar. Robots and cyborgs who all inexplicably fit into neat mythological or animalistic design categories. "Borderlands" weapons. Silly holographic hacking alongside hackneyed elemental magic/force/plasmid/whatever-we're-calling-it-this-week attacks.

It may well be a good game, but ye gads, it's uninspiring.

 

[Lightknight]

Lazy lazy lazy excuse to not launch for PC alongside the console ports.

I imagine that AAA developers are deciding to at least stagger pc launches nowadays to encourage early console adoption which has a significantly lower rate of piracy than PC ips. If that's the case then we'll need to get used to hearing insanely bogus excuses like this one.

Ever visit a torrent site? more 360 versions of the same game and DLC than PC versions is quite common. When multiplatform games has piracy numbers posted those numbers are not just PC so try not to be misled into thinking that all those downloads are PC only.

Not all, just that the ratio is supposed to be lower on consoles because the expertise demands to root a console and sidestep the firmware installations are far higher than simply clicking a download button and installing on a computer which is a "rooted" machine by default.

 

[ToastyMozart]

So making a PC version is too much work, but they went ahead and made versions to run on the PS3 and 360? Both systems with VASTLY different internal setups?

 

[Zakarath]

Well, I think it looks kinda neat, hope they get around to releasing on PC.

 

[Vigormortis]

ok I see a pretty big flaw in that logic, all those games don't require high end computers to play and there is a good chance all those players own a console. Now take into account that most people who own PCs on the low end don't know how to upgrade their computers so in order to play a new game that outstrips theirs even at a little bit they'll have to buy a new one. This leads to them weighing a $600+ pc to a $60 game for their console, sure it wont look as good but they don't have to buy a new PC.

Many recent hardware surveys have shown that this is actually untrue. Many PC players - in this instance those using Steam, Origin, etc - actually have mid to low-high-end hardware profiles. If I recall correctly, most already have hardware equivalent to or better than that of the new consoles.

So in reality most gamers won't need to upgrade their PCs to play the latest crop of "next-gen" games.

Perhaps they will if they plan to "max out" the settings of these games, but those that tend to not care about upgrading hardware won't really care about "maxed out" graphics either.

Even so, within the scenario you've presented and assuming they've already purchased an Xbox One or a PS4, you have a point. And in that regard most would logically choose to buy the game for their respective console.

Though the chances of someone having a dedicated gaming PC that's actually worse than the 360 or PS3 in hardware specs are very low. So for those platforms it's a moot point.

Now I want to make this clear so I don't get attacked again I am a PC gamer I just understand were we as a community stand. We are seen as whiny and ungrateful to most devs due to the mass bitching the vocal minority does so the best thing we can do is say nothing and not buy the game if its a shitty port. Use your wallets not your words that will send a much better message then bashing a game on a forum.

The trouble is 'speaking with our wallets' is pointless if we've nothing to buy on our platform of choice. And avoiding purchasing the games when they do come to the platform sends the wrong message to the game makers. It doesn't say, "We want better ports!", it says, "We don't want your games at all!"

It's a catch-22 in the purest form.

 

[Sarge034]

Aaactualy, just a few years (read around the time Jimothy Sterling joined us) there was all sorts of up in arms-ness over how PC gaming is dying and blah blah blah. So, yeah, there's that. Also, with regards to the whole porting thing-we tend to get the shaft on those also, be they good titles or bad, they seem to be ported wholesale bulk brand coding rather than taking the time to ensure a good solid stability and userfriendliness, which might be because lolmods, but I digress.

And your point is? I'm not trying to be condescending I just can't find a point here. So there was a point that "PC gaming was dead"... Am I supposed to feel something? There was a point when console gaming was dead too. I'm assuming "we" refers to PC gamers? I'm going to assume it does. PC gamers get bad ports just like console gamers get bad ports.

My point was that PC gamers need to stop acting like everything has to cater to them all the time. "Seriously, everyone gets the shaft at one point because their platform is not supported at all or is an afterthought." This time it happens to be the PC gamers getting the shaft. Tough luck, but at least they are entertaining the idea of porting the game.

Depends on their porting experience and relative resources. I didn't give From Software too much shit over their Dark Souls port because they'd never done it before and are a relatively small dev team. Also, they let the mod crew fix it. They did much better next time, although it's still not perfect, it's quite good. I don't think it's too much to ask for a game that works.

So you do understand why they chose not to take on another platform then? Coding for four different platforms, four vastly different platforms, is a hell of a feat in it's own right. But because they aren't coding it for your platform RIGHT NOW you have to feel entitled about it.

Oh, and finally, saying that the old consoles are horribly outdated is PC elitist rather than reality? Oh come on man. This past console generation lasting so long means there's a massive gulf in hardware between the old and the new. In order to get something that looks shiny on the new consoles but plays on the old takes a lot more effort than porting to PC should when you go from these new consoles.

I'm not arguing the fact that the gap in tech is causing problems, that is actually the basis of my comments. But step back and look at the arrogance of your statement. They chose to make the game on four different platforms but because they didn't choose mine for the first round I need to thrash the company. THAT is PC elitism.

 

[thewatergamer]

Ehhh I am pissed at the little amount of care bungie has for PC gamers

but on the flip side, Destiny doesn't really look that interesting to begin with

So I don't really care that much...

I'm more upset at the fact that bungie doesn't give a crap about PC gamers...

Oh well its bungie and activision so I can't say I'm suprised

 

[1337mokro]

I always say treat others the same that you want to be treated. Which means that once this finally hits PC I'll grab it. Just not a launch... maybe later... during a sale... for 5$. You reap what you sow, if you want to play this game I can play it all day long.

Ubisoft learned that lesson the hard way by releasing shitty games on console first and then realizing that now nobody on PC is going to buy it later in the year.