Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[Waaghpowa]

So it isnt. THat baffles me but whatever, youll have to use a gamepad anyway.

Resident evil 4 and 5 were on PC as well, how is it a surprise? PC gamers don't HAVE to use anything. You can choose to use whatever you want, and if it's not natively supported, there's software for that. Great thing about PC games is that you can do whatever you want, not what a greedy corporation tells you.

I think rts and mmos will thrive on pc, but they will be severely gimped by piracy no doubt.

Your opinion, not fact. I guess that massive pile of money blizzard is sitting on from starcraft 2 was totally gimped by piracy. Also MMO's can't be gimped by piracy, seeing as many of them are either free to play or subscription based AND you have to purchase a legitimate key to start an account. You can't pirate a subscription.

If they were more viable on consoles, then mmo rts would leaave pc in droves but thats not reality, theyre stuck on pc for the time being, where they do relatively well as a genre.

It will never thrive on consoles until manufacturers can get out of their stupid dick waving competitions and open things up on the communications side, allowing cross platform play, as well as allowing different control inputs. You know why there isn't cross platform play for most games? Because they want you to buy their proprietary hardware. What incentive is there for you to get an Xbox to play a game with a friend if you already own the same game on your PS3 if it was cross platform? Absolutely none.

 

[Varil]

-can't be arsed to read 8 pages of what has probably devolved into flaming by now.

To be fair, Titan's Quest was a bit meh. Not a BAD game, I bought it looking for a good hack n'slash, but it got boring long before I finished it. My opinion might not encompass everybody, but I don't think I'm alone in my opinion ever.

If you're going for "big budget" games, you have to do better than average, or else yeah, you're just going to end up in financial trouble. I don't doubt that the PC market is *harder* to stay competitive in, for various reasons, but I sincerely doubt it's impossible to turn a profit if you're good at making excellent games. Or even average games, if you know how to do that without blowing a huge pile of cash on it.

 

[sonofliber]

well first off, titan quest was a meh game and boring (i wonder why it didnt sell well......).

second you want to sell to the pc crowd?

follow this easy steps:

1) dont insult them
2) dont release a beta (this is a really difficult point with the new mentality of "we will fix it later peharps")
3) make the game worth it (have nice gameplay/story/effects/etc..)
4) stop treating us like pirates, the pirates already cracked your stupid drm and the only ones that are suffering are the guys that are actually trying to support you.
5) dont give us a shitty port, spend a month or 2 trying to adapt it to pc.
6) make us think you care for us (dont give stupid 1st day dlc, dont cut half the fing game away, and sell it to us like dlc, etc..)
also pc gaming its not dead, its just way more easy to develop for consoles that pc (in short they are laizy)

 

[ph0b0s123]

Unless you have something that says what the power difference was back in the PS2 days, quoting Carmack does not help much. You can read specs out to your hearts content. Syaing it is x10 now, is great but it may well have been x100 back then.

Your example of BF is rubbish as all that difference has no effect on the gameplay. It is the same game, same campaign, just with the PC having better graphics. The only mechanic difference between the two versions is the number of players in multiplayer between the two platforms.

The fact is back when the PS2 etc were around, you had a PC version and a console versions of the game things like Far Cry vs Far Cry Instincts, Battlefield 2 vs Battlefield 2 Modern Combat. The way the game played, the campaign, the mechanics, etc were different, rather than the game being the same but with the PC just having better graphics. Actually the Medal of Honour Series release history [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor_%28series%29#Games_in_the_series] demonstrates this perfectly, until the 360 / PS3, the PC and consoles never shared a game version release. Different versions were made of the two markets.

There were muti-format games back then, like GTA, etc, but they were the exception rather than the rule. The main thing this console generation has brought for better or worse, is convergence between console and PC gaming experiences, fact. Hence the decrease in unique to PC games.

There was not a x100 fold difference in power between PS2 and PC. That's ridiculous. They were closer then than now by comparing CPU clocks and available system memory.

I also don't think you appreciate what a gulf in difference an order of magnitude processing power means, that is conventionally the difference between generations of hardware.

Love your mis-reading of everything I wrote. I said it 'may well have been x100' not it was. And no you cannot just look at CPU clocks and memory. CPU clocks on the PC have been about the same for the past fives years if not longer, around 3GHz. But the power has gone up due to different architectures. Unless you have got something that says the difference was less than the supposed x10 difference there is now then you cannot prove the disparity was not more then.

"until the 360 / PS3, the PC and consoles never shared a game version release."

You speak with remarkably certainty about something you are clearly very ignorant about. Some of the MANY examples to the contrary:

-Soldier of Fortune
-Max Payne
-Max Payne 2
-Elder Scrolls Morrowind
-Jedi Knight 2: Jedi outcast
-Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
-No One Lives Forever
-Counterstrike (four year after PC version as XBOX was not around then.)
-Rainbow Six (launched more than a year laer and the port was laughed at, 3.8 at IGN)
-Starcraft (launched 2 years after PC version)
-Command & Conquer (many years after PC launch)
-Hidden & Dangerous
-Quake 3 (was released on PC before PS2 Launched, released PS2 2 years after PC version)
I could go on.

"until the 360 / PS3, the PC and consoles never shared a game version release." For Medal of Honour, fairly obvious I was talking about only Medal o Honour. That there were multiformat games at the time was not being disagreed with.

Also made some note about your supposed good examples of these games were on console too games. Cannot be bother to point out why the rest also don;t qualify as 'multi format' as the term is used today.

"all that difference has no effect on the gameplay. It is the same game, same campaign, just with the PC having better graphics." what you said about BF3, applies just as well with this list of games fro PS2 era and even PS1 era.

Console got a version with identical game-play, levels, etc, just differing controls and graphics. You are talking ABSOLUTE NONSENSE to say that back then it was the rule for console games to be redesigned to make up for the vast gulf in difference in power.

There are more exceptions to this "rule" of yours than there are actual examples!

Far Cry was just a weird decision that came from how Crytek owned the right to the GAME Far Cry, but Ubisoft owned the rights to the Name and characters and so on. Crytek had no interest in console gaming (that continued through to Crysis + Warhead) so no port but Ubisoft could get third party studies to ride off the brand name making new games. The different versions have NOTHING to do with differences in hardware.

Those Medal of Honor examples aren't different versions. They are completely different games, made from scratch.

"They are completely different games, made from scratch."
That was my point....

Medal of Honor Underground has a completely different developer team and different design focus than Allied Assault, and they were made for how at the time console and PC gaming tastes were hugely different. Remember, Medal of Honor Underground came out on consoles the same time as cheesefest Perfect Dark was a huge hit on consoles, while PC gamers were getting their tast of Sim-war shooters and the frenetic pace of Quake. Halo had not introduced many to console controls.

PC and console have converged somewhat, in the broadest sense with things like the idea of multiplayer gaming.

But mostly they are hugely distinct and they are growing further apart.

No, most games are multi-format now with their being no difference between the PC and consoles versions apart from the graphics fidelity and the option to use mouse and keyboard. If you believe they are getting further apart how come most PC games are still using DirectX 9 to render graphics, I wonder why? I am a huge PC fan and have hardly gamed on anything else since I got my first PC in 1989, but even I am not deluded enough in my fandom to that most of our games now, are pretty much what you get on other platforms now. Your belive that they are growing further apart is crazy. The only thing growing further aprt is the processing divide which will be cut again when the next gen of consoles launch.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Tech has made piracy worse. Think about it, before you were limited to a CD or a Cassette to copy music. With MP3 and hard drives you can download and store thousands of songs and albums and games for little cost.

 

[Coldster]

This actually makes a ton of sense from my perspective. Look at how well the Halo franchise did by selling solely on one console (with PC sales but you know what I mean). Many of today's best sellers sell better on consoles and/or ONLY on consoles. Now, blaming this on piracy is a bit of a stretch, it is a fairly solid argument since its undeniably about 1000 times easier to pirate games for your PC than for a console. However it seems more like a scapegoat than a serious suggestion. I don't know, this needs more research before anyone can truly make this kind of statement.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Because all Blizzard and Valve titles are low budged indie titles from Ukraine.

Make a good game, people will buy it. Make a shitty game, people won't buy it unless they are big fans or have more money than they need. Even without piracy, most games wouldn't be bought much more than they are now.

Piracy is just used as an excuse. Every game that is on the PC can be moded. Every multiplayer game that is on the PC ca have some servers even when the company decides to take them down (private servers). Companies will never have the control they want on the PC market. They simply gave up on that marked, moved on another. Does anyone really think that Activision likes that their CoD game lasts longer than a game? Do you really think that they wouldn't like to be able to force you to buy a CoD game once per year?

PC gamer have much more control over their bought game, that's what they don't like.


And last time I checked, WoW sold more than 10 million copies... the number is much bigger now.
Isn't WoW a PC exclusive? I don't care that it's a MMO. Give the people what they want, they will pay for it. Annoy people with shit they don't want and hide malicious stuff in it, they will kick you in the balls and steal your game.

Piracy in the video game industry is what terrorism is in the real world.
A real treat, but not even close to 1% of what they make you think it is. Weekly more people die from eating to much than terrorism kills in a year. Less games are being sold because they are crap rather than because they get pirated.

 

[Erttheking]

You know, I can see how that works. Piracy does syphon away profits, you can't argue that point. It's kind of sad really.

 

[newwiseman]

I like how he said the actual cause and then blamed it on piracy.

Making games is expensive. Making sure games will work with every possible hardware configuration is even more expensive. If you feel your game isn't good enough to make the number of sales required to cover the cost of development then you don't make the game. Consoles are easy, you work with specific hardware and can design your code to take full advantage of the limited hardware.

Blaming your lack of sales on piracy is a cop out for admitting your product wasn't good enough for people to actually want to buy it. I also like how everyone has an opinion in spite of every credible study that has ever been published.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Bollox, I had a bonafide gamestop purchased copy of titan quest that melted my video card and was crashy mc-crasherson.

Great game though, hideously unbalanced and not nearly playtested enough for that kind of game but really good for its time.

There are tons of pc exclusives and you know what I dont even care about pc exclusivity. As long as the game for the PC takes advantage of PC hardware and has an interface appropriate for mouse, keyboard and sitting 1-2 feet away from a 1080p screen.

The problem with console ports is that they don't do that, they tack on the gamepad interface, don't take into account a pc gamer can read 30 lines on their screen easily and actively hate keyboard and mouse use (see skyrim).

Why the hell am I limited to 10 hotkeys on skyrim? It should have fully mapped keyboard like any pc game released in the past 15 years.

I speak for pc gamers when I say "don't let the door hit ya on the way out".

 

[ph0b0s123]

I like how he said the actual cause and then blamed it on piracy.

Making games is expensive. Making sure games will work with every possible hardware configuration is even more expensive. If you feel your game isn't good enough to make the number of sales required to cover the cost of development then you don't make the game. Consoles are easy, you work with specific hardware and can design your code to take full advantage of the limited hardware.

Blaming your lack of sales on piracy is a cop out for admitting your product wasn't good enough for people to actually want to buy it. I also like how everyone has an opinion in spite of every credible study that has ever been published.

"If you feel your game isn't good enough to make the number of sales required to cover the cost of development then you don't make the game."

That is not it any more. The calculation is not will it make a profit or be a loss, it is will it make consoles profits. Ubisoft said it recently when they said they were not interested in a PC version of a game as they would only make half a million off it.

 

[lordmardok]

But according to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Lead Designer Ian Frazier, nailing the lucrative console market isn't necessarily the biggest impediment to major PC exclusives. "No, probably not. A game this big is very expensive, to be blunt about it," he told IncGamers [http://www.incgamers.com/News/30386/reckoning-dev-rampant-piracy-makes-big-budget-pc-exclusives-unlikely] when asked whether a game like Kingdoms of Amalur could make it on the PC alone. "The PC, with piracy being as rampant as it is, is really hard to make money from. My first game was Titan Quest, a hack 'n' slash RPG, which was PC only, but the amount that it was pirated was the difference between us staying in business and going out of business."

It's not impossible to do well by focusing on the PC but the bottom line is that the open nature of the system makes the risk of failure, even with a really good game, much higher. "It's really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC," he said. "Unless you're an MMO."

I bought Titan Quest. I played Titan Quest. Believe me when I say this: pirates were not the issue. The game just kinda sucked in comparison to it's vastly superior predecessor Diablo II. This is just a shameless bandwagon jump to gain publicity from the currently hot topic of pirating games what with SOPA and all it's ratty little offspring. If a game is good then people will buy it, if it's well made and competently designed then it will at least do well. Of course it's not possible to prevent people from pirating it but that won't keep a good game from doing well.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

So is this the "new" way to advertize? Troll the consumers right before release?

Pretty sure this isn't the first time someone has done this.

 

[m72_ar]

As much as I hate it when a developer blames bad sales on piracy, if you don't think piracy is a serious problem on the PC you're blind.

While you can argue that HL2, Witcher 2, and SC2 is highly succesful. you are talking about some of the biggest IP in PC gaming and they will be very profitable no matter what. The case is not true for a mid level IP like this one

While I don't think piracy is too blame for everything, believing that it's not affecting a game profitability on the PC is just not ignorant

 

[BlueMage]

Eh, kinda hard to care what someone from fucking Iron Lore claims. After all they claimed Soul Storm getting pirated to hell was what shut them down. Anyone who played Soul Storm knows that it was Soul Storm being shit that shut them down.

So no. Its just bigger install base of consoles that makes it easier.

I don't get the hate for Soul Storm. Without it, we'd never have known about the tendency for OUH ENAMEES to hide in METUHL BAWKSES the COWHARDS, the FEWLS! Or that WE! We should TAKE AWAY their METUHL BAWKSES.

 

[theultimateend]

Hahaha oh you.


As if console piracy doesn't exist. Go stick your head in the sand some more.

Fantastic for exfoliating.

 

[Sylveria]

Poor Titan Quest...

Thanks PC gaming pirates... thanks for fucking that up.

I also find the last line interesting : "It's really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC," he said. "Unless you're an MMO."

Wasn't the idea of Kingdoms of Amawhatever supposed to be the intro for their MMO game?

Yeah, darn pirates, they ruin all the PC games, except for all those hugely successful ones.

Oh, hey, crazy thought, but maybe, just maybe, good games sell and bad games don't?

Good games are also pirated like crazy, didn't you hear?

Portal 2, Skyrim, L.A.Noire (okay, you can argue that isn't a great game) Katawa Shoujo (lol, it's free) Saint's Row 3, Angry Birds... ect ect...

Sure, you can argue that it's okay since these games sold like sliced bread, but do you really think the people who made them don't deserve anymore money... er, uhm... yeah, you could be the type of 'person' to say that... but what about the people who made King Arthur II, Anno 2070, The Witcher 2, Dirt 3, Might and Magic Heroes VI, Total War Shogun 2, Need for Speed The run, Dead Island...

All the games are pirated like crazy every fucking day. Doesn't that piss you off just a little? Is your idea of acceptable some imaginary number of profits that once crossed, equals free piracy rights for all the cheap fucks of the world?

(all games mentioned are in the top 50 pirated PC games)

A lot of the games in the top 50 pirated games are on STEAM also, so you can stop the whole restrictive DRM makes it okay bullshit.

It's scapegoating. If you game fails, blame it on pirates. Ignore any other issues, just blame the pirates. It's the perfect rationalization. Heck, Titan Quest failed because of Piracy, but not because of the pirates, but because of their DRM which made their game look buggy and broken. If that failed attempt at anti-piracy wasn't in the game, it may not met the fate it did.

Simple fact of the matter is there's many games that are successful despite being heavily pirated. You can't ignore them just because it doesn't mesh with your view. Why did Portal 2 still sell millions? Why did Skyrim still sell millions? Why did The Witcher 2 still sell millions? Cause they weren't pirated? Of course not, they were games that people wanted to buy.

Piracy is the result of the increasingly anti-consumer direction that the game industry went in. High prices, poor quality, no returns, and fewer and fewer methods to try before you buy.
For example, I'm thinking of getting Skyrim, ya know, one of those little indie games no one has heard of, but I've never liked WRPGs really. So what am I to do? Demo it? Nope, not over Steam anyway. Rent it? Can't rent PC games and I'm not interested in the console version. Borrow a friend's copy? That's a TOS violation. Just read reviews and hope for the best right?

So I go ahead and get it, I hate it, then what? Return it? Nope. Trade it in? Nope. I've flushed $60 down the toilet. I can't even give the game to someone else after that.

So what are my options? Gambling or piracy. I can spend my $60 and hope for the best, or I can pirate it, try it out, and then determine if I want to spend my money on it. Are they losing a sale? Nope, cause my purchasing was contingent on it being a product I wanted. If I had the option to rent (give them a small amount of money in exchange for a small time-frame of ownership which would expire.) or legally demo (A demonstration of a product which gives an individual hands on time with said product to determine if they wish to purchase it's completed form) I totally would have, but they did not offer me those options. My options were "Buy it, sight unseen, at full price" or "Don't"

Did I pirate it and try it? No I didn't, but I certainly don't decry people who do. Same as I don't condemn people who buy a game that's drowning in DRM, then "pirate" a cracked copy of a game THEY OWN, because Ubisoft or whoever wants to keep a leash on them. And I'd bet really good money that the vast majority of pirated games are people who do it for those reasons, not as someway to get stuff for free.

I still haven't bought Skyrim, The Witcher 2, Serious Sam BFE, and number of other titles that I am genuinely interested in, but am unsure if they're "my thing" and I have no legal way to discover that without buying them at full price with absolutely no way to recover my loses if I do not enjoy my product.

So my solution to piracy? Don't make garbage, include more demos, and engineer some sort of "rental" option for PC games. With Steam around, the latter 2 should be a breeze. The first one is up to the developers, but don't come crying to me when your shitty game fails because of what you put into it.

And let us not forget that many of these companies consider the Used market as bad as piracy. These people, of course, bought new cars, new appliances, new houses, new wives, new everything, because if not, going by EA logic, they've pirated their car, their fridge, their home, their wife, and so on, because they bought it used. No money went back to the retailer/construction company/parents of those things.

Can you imagine if they outlawed the purchase of used homes? What about those poor builders who spent so much time to make that house, don't they deserve a cut of the resale? Why does the retailer/bank get all the money, they sure didn't build it. This is the exact argument that people use to condemn used video games/movies/etc.

 

[Treblaine]

Spoiler

almost every one of those are mmos or rts, and the 80% of them are most definitely NOT triple A. Nice try, but this strengthens my argument, not yours

And Ryse, Haunt, Steel battalion, American nightmare is triple A games?

So if you compare, 20% of the pc only games are triple A (According to you) which means 51/5=10,2 games are triple A for pc, and on xbox you got one triple A game which means that you actually get 9.2 more triple A games for pc. So I do not understand how it strengthen your argument.

And may I ask why mmo & rts doesnt count?

MMO and RTS dont count because Ive already conceded from the very beginning that these are healthy markets on pc, mainly because the genre limits them from being on consoles.

Really? Well if that is the case then we can exclude jRPGs and motion gimmick games.

Btw, the list you spoilerd should be PC exclusive vs console exclusive, not ps3, xbox exclusive, its just being disngenuous. Those arent the only 2 consoles in the world.

Well that is fair, three consoles gang up on PC. OR do you mean to include PSP, DS, 3DS as well? God, you need to stack every odd don't you. It's it enough that you exclude a load of the most popular genres from PC. You wouldn't be charitable enough to include android/apple app marketpalce on PC side?

And besides, its only a list of 2012. The year only just started, there will be many more games announced from now to the summer.

But that's a zero-sum difference, it will affect all platforms equally. No advantage/disadvantage to any.

why should that affect jrpgs or motion games? FF7 played perfectly on my pc, and you guys are getting an upgraded kinect for 250 dollars, motion work will perfectly on pc. I suppose you could make the point about ps3 keyboards and mice or whatever, this is small stuff. ANyway this discussion is getting needlessly acute, its simple, is the market for AAA pc gaming growing or shrinking? lets compare now vs 2000. Was pc gaming stronger back then or is it stronger now? Simple question.

Oh, so technically jRPGs and Kinect is possible on PC. So too are MMO and Strategy games technically possible on console.

So, which way do you want it to be, you can't have it both ways.

"needlessly acute"

What? Needlessly "short terms severe medical symptoms"?!?!?