theonecookie said:
Adam Jensen said:
theonecookie said:
You know what the funny thing is making a super high end game for super high end rigs would send you out of business a lot quick because you limit your target audience to some silly low figure like .5% but you know common sense is lost on people who buy such machines
Yeah, they'd go out of business if they make quality games. Last time I checked Battlefield 3 wasn't a PC exclusive and yet it's oozing with quality. Same thing with a lot of other multiplatform games.
Well that is true but that wasn't my argument was it battlefield 3 looks gorgeous on the xbox never mind the pc. I want quality as much as the next person but my argument was that making a game only a few people can play is pointless
ph0b0s123 said:
theonecookie said:
Adam Jensen said:
A high-end PC is nearly ten times as powerful as a console and we could unquestionably provide a better experience if we chose that as our design point and we were able to expend the same amount of resources on it.
This basically translates to
we know PC's are the best, but PC gamers want high quality products that we choose not to make. We would rather be lazy and make games for inferior systems because people who play on those systems don't seem to care. And we're also ignoring Valve's business practice because they make money on PC by creating high quality games, that we, as I said before, don't intend to make. Long live mediocrity!
Guess who's going out of business soon.
You know what the funny thing is making a super high end game for super high end rigs would send you out of business a lot quick because you limit your target audience to some silly low figure like .5% but you know common sense is lost on people who buy such machines
I love that everyone only focuses on the high end with these discussions. Fact is if the highend is more powerfull so is the mainstream of PC's as well. That is the mainstream of pc's are powerfull enough that they could support AI and other game mechanics that console could notn So it is not just the top 5% as everone tries to make out and therefore the lack of market is rubbish.
Calling bullshit right there. While it is true that even a mid-range pc out strips consoles the fact is that the average mainstream PC at the moment I'm willing to bet is a bout 3-4 years old and wasn't top of the range when it was new so the power gap you talk about is over played to the extreme
If you cut these people out as well as both primary consoles you limit your target audience to about 10% at best of the total player base so you have increased cost and lower sales from a business point of view that's a bit dumb when your putting millions on the line
Also what AI and game mechanics do you have in mind the AI is fairly light weight as the needs for processing go and game mechanics tend to be limited by controls not power (the only thing i can think of is maybe someting to do with time travel that renders multiple time lines at once)
Right where to start. First on your statement about 'average PC's' vs consoles in power. The 'average PC's' you are talking about are not PC's that are being used to run the games we are talking about here, like Rage. So they were never part of the PC gaming market in the first place, so losing them makes no difference. The average gaming PC, which is what we are really interested in, is a couple of times more powerful that consoles.
About the idea that excluding current consoles owners and very low end PC's is a bad idea. I disagree, in the short term it is not great for your bottom line. In the long term though it is great as you already have titles for the next gen of console to play. You also have driven desire / interest (or whatever the economic term is) for the next generation of console with killer apps that are ready to go at launch. Rather than having new hardware being launched followed by a period of people not know what to do with it and a lack of killer titles. This is what happened in previous generations where PC titles that could initially only be run on PC's, enthused console owners into getting the next gen as it could finally run those titles only PC's owners could play at that point.
Next is the idea that AI does not need much processing power. I think you have got the cart before the horse here. AI takes up little processing power at the moment as it cannot use more due to, certainly on consoles, that power being needed to run graphics etc... Hence why most games are generally seen to have very ropey AI. For better AI, more processing power is needed.
As for the idea that better game mechanics are not helped by more processing power. All you need to do is take the example of Battlefield 3, if not all Battlefield games that have been multi-format. Why do you think it is that the PC versions can always accommodate more players in on-line matches (64 vs 24)? Also going back to your first point, this mechanic of allowing more players to play together is open to all PC's that can run the game, i.e the whole PC gaming market can use a mechanic that consoles cannot, not just the top 10% of the market. QED......
