Doesn't it fell like PC gamers are getting the shaft?

[Gamblerjoe]

I think its just a matter of time. Since hardware progresses so much faster than software, prices of good gaming PCs will continue to drop. If more people owned gaming PCs there would be much more incentive for the industry to cater to them.

Without getting too much into reliability issues and how many times you will have to replace your console (an issue I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about,) I can say that at least some gamers end up spending much more than a couple hundred dollars on their consoles alone. If more companies would put PCs together for people at reasonable prices without shafting them on one part or another, the industry would be much healthier. Im sure this will spur many people to start sending me links, but I have never been satisfied with what Iv seen.

If you put your PC together yourself, you can get one that can handle graphics settings equal to what you get from consoles for around $500. Mine came in closer to $900, but I aimed for middle of the road parts that were the best bang for the buck I could find.

At any rate, Im kind of all over the place here. I just think that the people working in the VG industry are smart folks and if they want to they can figure it out. I don't feel all that left out, because I haven't had my PC for very long. I played ME and ME2, along with some of the orange box and potato sack games I never got to play on my old PC. Besides that, Im just waiting for SWTOR to come out. Maybe if I was more on the cutting edge, I would be clamoring to play every new game that comes out.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Your not looking at the right places.
The Witcher 2 and Skyrim are shining examples of the game being ALOT better on PC.

And yet they still leave it up to us to mod ourselves a functional UI? Seriously, that menu system was built for a console, and it's depressing.

So? At least the PC version can be altered. If you have a problem with something in the console version, tough shit, you have to live with it.

 

[Mirror Cage]

Eh. As someone who buys a lot of games for both the PC and 360, I don't see it.
I haven't noticed much in the way of bugs from my ports: Skyrim has crashed maybe 3 times in the 48+ hours I've played already.

Honestly, any problems I've had with buggy games have been made up for by all the PC exclusive indie games that usually work without a flaw.

 

[Voodoomancer]

Your not looking at the right places.
The Witcher 2 and Skyrim are shining examples of the game being ALOT better on PC.
Even fable 3 got a PC version with VAST improvements ( namely a difficulty setting).
The big games on PC don't come as frequently as console games.
Think about it in the terms fine dining(pc gamers) and MCdonalds(console gamers) even people who fine dine like to eat Mcdonalds sometimes but ALOT of people who have eaten Mcdonalds will NEVER fine dine.

Indeed. *dons monocle and tophat* PC is for the civilized folks.

OT: It is indeed laziness. Make a game for console specs A or console specs B, or make a game compatible with the vast variety of possible PC setups?

 

[The Abhorrent]

I really have to wonder why some people are so quick to declare something as arbitrarily "superior" when their reasons are either non-existent, silly (i.e.: "it's more pretty"), and/or completely ignore the possibility that the other side might actually have some benefits. Neither PC nor consoles are the superior platform, they're just better suited to different things.

To comment on one thing, developpers sticking to a console so that they don't have to worry about the hardware being a problem is actually a smart decision. Why? They're spending less time buggering about trying to make the game work for all the various pieces of hardware, and putting that time into making the game better (or at least should be). Porting it over the PC can be done later; but if you have a working model for a console, you at least know how it should be working. True, some ports could be done better; but the key point is that working with a more-or-less fixed set of hardward allows developpers to focus on the quality of the product rather than it's technical issues. On the bright side, games like Skyrim have a strong (and pre-established) modding community who are working to fix those technical issues; ideally the devs will have it perfect before launch, but the mod community is a bit of a "free-resource" if there's outstanding issues to be resolved.

---

As for why the PC isn't inherently better than consoles, the simplest reason is the requirement for an elegant interface. Far too often many PC games (and especially PC gamers) fall into the trap of thinking that complexity is an inherently good thing; in many cases, nothing could be further from the truth. A lot of the times, PC games are unnecessarily complex; there's far too many variables on the table than there has to be. Sure, it might make you look smarter... but really, it's just the look. Simple & intuitive solutions (aka: practical solutions) are quite often the best ones. There's only two handfuls of buttons on console's controller, so you have to keep the interface simple & elegant; especially in more action-oriented games. This leads to a fair bit of "touchy-feely" (or intuitive) gameplay, something which greatly helps a game become more accessible to the average person.

Not to leave PC games completely without any advantages, there are still some perks to the mouse and keyboard. They aren't the most intuitive interface, but the set-up allows for greater precision. Bugs & glitches aside, you can get things to do exactly what you want them to. In games, this gives you a greater degree of control over things like positioning, targeting, and just keeping track of multiple units. It's great for RTS games and RPGs where you're required to control a whole party in a precise manner, though it tends to feel rather clunky when you're in a more action-oriented title in control of only one character (FPS games not withstanding, due to shooting blending in seamlessly with pointing-&-clicking). Another benefit is that you can have a wide range of options at your disposal, often in the form of precise commands; you can have a specific tool available quickly for a specific situation. Consoles tend to favour more basic tools which can be applied to a wider variety of situations, and that's not necessarily a bad thing either. With more precision comes more complexity, which is both good when it's necessary to make things work the way you want them to; unnecessary complexity is almost never a good thing, period. And yes, PC games have mods, and they are good.

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In summation, give the elitism a rest; regardless of whether it's in favour of PC or consoles.
It just makes whomever's using it look both arrogant and stupid.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

thats why.
not that you need to spend large amounts (what, £200 maybe?)or money to upgrade your gaming platform to play £40 games.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

If anything the only thing annoying about PC gaming is that the consoles are holding the graphics and physics engines back massively not because they are bad but because they are old.

Skyrim for example wasn't even made to take advantage of quad core :| and the 'Ultra' settings are really quite low. I'm personally waiting for an ini file that will take advantage of my system.

There's a veryhigh.ini file (might not be the exact name) with a bunch of stuff that's not selectable in the game menus. Don't know if you've tried that already, might want to look into it though.

OT: Eh, not really.

Although I have a particular beef at the moment: mouse smoothing/acceleration and FOV. Stop fucking forcing the former and not providing an option to turn it off (it should be off by default anyway, I've never known anyone to actively want the fucking thing), and stop leaving the latter at widths that are only suitable when you're sitting away from a big screen.

The PC's coming back to the forefront, problem is that some devs are too stupid/lazy to just include all the options in the menus and realise that PC gamers aren't console gamers. But there are plenty that focus on it.

Instead of screwing around with values in the Skyrim configs, I suggest you just use this:
http://donotargue.com/cfg-makers/skyrim/

The recent update they did to it is so awesome.

I tried that but I just keep getting CTD's not entirely sure what I'm messing up

 

[gigastrike]

I don't know, I've been too busy playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Civilization V, Minecraft, Starcraft 2, The Witcher 2, and Shogun 2: Total War to notice.

 

[mjc0961]

I have two great examples (though there's tons more): Saints Row 2 had no DLC released for it cause of the game devs said "Oh it can be stolen."ie pirated.

That's not a great example. A great example would be how poor the SR2 PC port was in general. Not getting the DLC is actually a favor, as the SR2 DLC was terrible. They saved you around $17 if I recall. I only wish they hadn't released it on Xbox 360 too.

 

[efAston]

Unfortunately they couldn't even get the running well part right.

I've heard about the issues, but the deal-breaker for me was that for a game that is apparently unplayable for most (on PC), it has a $90 price tag and NO DEMO'. This was a Bethesda decision, going by what I've heard, and even outside of games that are known for technical issues (which is an increasing amount), it's rude to release without a demo', because it means I don't know what I'm buying, and, as a Linux user, don't know if it'll work, beyond "It's not supported". Arkham Asylum added a kick in the balls by saying "if you pirate it, you can play it without gliding, which will eventually stop you advancing". So not only are they too lazy to make a demo' available, but are using unhacked copies as one?

Bethesda and Ubisoft are two companies I want nothing to do with. I feel vindicated that their games are bad enough to warrant this, as well as their business practices, but it doesn't surprise me, as I can't imagine a haughty corporate environment fostering creativity. Especially not when they're companies that directly try to stop creativity with their approaches to copyright (for example, by claiming to own the word Scrolls, and the name Tom Clancy).

 

[Wolfram23]

I tried that but I just keep getting CTD's not entirely sure what I'm messing up

Ah, yes. Well I don't know if you noticed but yesterday there was an update. It updated the .exe file to give us PC players lots of CTDs. Well, technically I think it's something to do with DRM to make sure Steam is online or something... but anyway I got a CTD within minutes of it patching. Luckily I had a backup of my original .exe file. Anyway you can find the original file on the Bethesda forums (huge thread on the issue of that update).

What you want to do from there is use one of the many 4GB (large address aware) mods for the original .exe file (doesn't work on that updated one). You should be fine after that.

 

[Xyliss]

Your not looking at the right places.
The Witcher 2 and Skyrim are shining examples of the game being ALOT better on PC.
Even fable 3 got a PC version with VAST improvements ( namely a difficulty setting).
The big games on PC don't come as frequently as console games.
Think about it in the terms fine dining(pc gamers) and MCdonalds(console gamers) even people who fine dine like to eat Mcdonalds sometimes but ALOT of people who have eaten Mcdonalds will NEVER fine dine.

Now I must agree with you on the first part...Some games are a lot better for PC. But I must disagree with the second part...but as a console gamer I have recently bought a gaming laptop because I wanted to play these better games and think your metaphor doesn't hold. Also if you take the literal meaning it's not true either

 

[newwiseman]

Piracy isn't a real issue, your still selling copies regardless of if everyone playing bought one. This argument carries no weight in my mind ever since a study found most people play games borrowed from their friends or purchase used. There most definitely are less PC sales but there are less PC gamers, my hypothesis is sales are probably proportional.

As for hacking, it happens on the consoles too. If they didn't program their game so badly a lot of hacking could be prevented (I'm looking at you Treyarch and Activision), namely increasing of damage and life or straight immortality. Also, if Cheat Engine can "Hack" your game, then you obviously don't really care if people are hacking it.

As for PC gamers getting the shaft ya that's true. The simple fact is it's easier to develop for a console, you know all its specs and what components are there, allowing programing directly for that hardware. On the PC they depend on Direct X, and can still end up with major driver and system conflicts. This is why gaming moved to consoles, there is less hardware and configuration to be aware of allowing for easier developments and faster, more stable builds. Though the accessibility of the internet and the ability to patch console games has obviously had an effect on how well companies feel they should debug games...

Still PC gaming will never die, there will always be developers willing to cater to us, and experiences better suited for us.

 

[Simeon Ivanov]

The problem is that devs don't realize that piracy and hacks also exist on consoles. It's just that it's more famous on the PC.

But yeah, I do feel like some games are getting half-assed because it easier to make a console port.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Developers are too lazy to code for PC's , because it's a lot harder to cater for the clearly superior gaming platform. Too many hardware configurations.

Ah, but it's not a 'superior gaming platform' ;p

It's a million different slightly different systems, some of which are vastly superior to consoles, some of which are much worse.

Thus the difficulty is that to succeed at creating a PC game you either have to be an unbelievably demanding snob (Eg. Crysis or going way back, Quake 3, and even Half=life 2), or you have to put in a tremendous effort to ensure that your game makes the most of EVERYONE's hardware, no matter how good or bad it is.

(The worst part being that the gap between 'best' and 'worst' PC's is that the best is about 100 times more powerful than the worst. - and that's ignoring stuff that's more than 4-5 years old entirely.)

 

[Xyliss]

No. Just because every game isn't catering to a PC market doesn't mean that PC is getting the shaft it means that other areas has ceased getting the shaft.

Well Said.
It's just more attention to other platforms as opposed to less to PC's

 

[Soviet Heavy]

*Sigh*
Someone get that "PC gaming is dying" picture, could you? I'm lazy.

You rang?

Heart of the Swarm is coming next year, and TOR is almost upon us. Plus we just got Skyrim, and I can happily beat the snot out of Jarl Balgruuf's son for being a little shit because I'm on PC and I have mods.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Developers are too lazy to code for PC's , because it's a lot harder to cater for the clearly superior gaming platform. Too many hardware configurations.

Ah, but it's not a 'superior gaming platform' ;p

It's a million different slightly different systems, some of which are vastly superior to consoles, some of which are much worse.

Thus the difficulty is that to succeed at creating a PC game you either have to be an unbelievably demanding snob (Eg. Crysis or going way back, Quake 3, and even Half=life 2), or you have to put in a tremendous effort to ensure that your game makes the most of EVERYONE's hardware, no matter how good or bad it is.

(The worst part being that the gap between 'best' and 'worst' PC's is that the best is about 100 times more powerful than the worst. - and that's ignoring stuff that's more than 4-5 years old entirely.)

Crysis isn't that good. One of the key reasons why it's got such a high sysreq is due to the fact that it leaks memory like nothing else.

 

[ph0b0s123]

One of the main things that annoys me currently is companies that delay the PC versions of multi-format games (Arkham city, Assassin?s Creed, etc) so that they can get as many consoles sales as possible. This mean that the amount of PC sale will obviously be less than the console sales for that title. Then this deficiency in sales is used as the reason why less effort is put into future PC games. Sound a little rigged to you?

 

[Frost27]

I think the overall problem is, consoles have finally entered the ballpark of PCs (or rather, they had 6 years ago when the current gen hit shelves). Once that happened game developers began to realize that to make a product for only a single market, the PC, was limiting their potential income to a fraction of what it could be with a widespread release.

Thus game companies began to develop cross platform. When doing this, they essentially have two viable choices.

The first being to spend far more capital on the development process to release each individual game tailored to each platform separately, thus making a product that while it better fits the capabilities of each platform, it costs more to make, may not translate well in cases, and cuts down overall profits (Force Unleashed and CoD World at War come to mind).

The other choice, design your product with the capabilities lowest common denominator in mind when it comes to platforms and max out what that system can handle, then tweak the cross platform incarnations a bit to keep each version viable. What comes to mind here is Skyrim. While the Ps3 and 360 have nothing on a good gaming PC, a version for these systems must still take the 360's use of DVDs vs. Blue-Ray into account. Thus installation tweaks and texture bugs etc. as well as the game's interface feeling lackluster on the PC due to the core being designed around the more constraining console capabilities.

Do I think this is all bad? Overall, no. What I think this has lead to is the current aged generation of consoles holding back PC gaming to a large degree because the consoles are incapable of evolving until a new generation emerges. What I hope to see is the eventual introduction of modular upgradeable consoles with changing capabilities that keep them much more viable much longer and allow the entirety of software development to progress at a smoother pace.

Since consoles have been becoming more and more PC like with each generation, it seems like natural progression. It seems like as we near the limits of the current generation we are just seeing a rough patch in gaming evolution that will lead to good things down the road.