Porting From PC to Console Is Doing Things Backwards, Says Rage Dev

[mjc0961]

People are probably going to be mad at them over it. I say good job, as long as they take time to make the PC version take advantage mouse and keyboard properly. A bad PC port is still just as annoying as a bad console port, even though less people will be bitching about it.

 

[Vault boy Eddie]

Being primarily a PC gamer, I don't see a problem with this, I mean, how can you mess up aiming with a mouse? The problem comes when deciding if a port will be worth getting or will it be full of bugs and whatnot, cause if there is no demo for the game and seeing as how you can't return PC games(at least where I live you can't) you might be stuck with a POS you can't play, this happened to me with Black Ops.

 

[bombadilillo]

-snip-

If you watch the whole interview he is very clear that PC's are 10x more powerful and its shocking how mediocre the difference is given that difference in hardware. Of course it will look better on PC, everything does. The difference is NOT EVEN CLOSE to what you would expect from 10x superior hardware.

It was a good interview he talked a lot aboiut development cycles and how shooting for top teir graphics can hamper your development.

The PC is 10x more powerful but you and Carmack are mystified as to why that difference in power is not being demonstrated...

I thought Carmack was smart. Bitching about the PC not showing it's potential while also stating that your next game will focus mainly on what consoles are capable of. These two things are related you know.

I have heard this put forwards a few times about why with all it's 'supposed' extra power is the PC not showing off that extra power. I wonder why. Maybe if someone develops a title for it that uses all of that power, even if it means that the title won't work on consoles. But that won't happen as it would be financial suicide at the moment. So we are stuck in a situation of the PC under delivering what it is capable of because the market is not big enough to support the investment needed to use that extra power, but due to it under performing the market never gets any bigger. Catch 22 or what.

But console gamers be warned you will be having the same problem soon as there is a bigger gaming market than even yours arriving soon. I expect ID to be mainly focusing on mobile devices next time around, making all their staff play the game with the touch interface before using a joypad. Damn those awful mobile ports.

Nobodies mystified. Way to state what everybody else already said. And there are plenty of games that are pc only and still dont look too good!

 

[Vault boy Eddie]

-snip-

If you watch the whole interview he is very clear that PC's are 10x more powerful and its shocking how mediocre the difference is given that difference in hardware. Of course it will look better on PC, everything does. The difference is NOT EVEN CLOSE to what you would expect from 10x superior hardware.

It was a good interview he talked a lot aboiut development cycles and how shooting for top teir graphics can hamper your development.

The PC is 10x more powerful but you and Carmack are mystified as to why that difference in power is not being demonstrated...

I thought Carmack was smart. Bitching about the PC not showing it's potential while also stating that your next game will focus mainly on what consoles are capable of. These two things are related you know.

I have heard this put forwards a few times about why with all it's 'supposed' extra power is the PC not showing off that extra power. I wonder why. Maybe if someone develops a title for it that uses all of that power, even if it means that the title won't work on consoles. But that won't happen as it would be financial suicide at the moment. So we are stuck in a situation of the PC under delivering what it is capable of because the market is not big enough to support the investment needed to use that extra power, but due to it under performing the market never gets any bigger. Catch 22 or what.

But console gamers be warned you will be having the same problem soon as there is a bigger gaming market than even yours arriving soon. I expect ID to be mainly focusing on mobile devices next time around, making all their staff play the game with the touch interface before using a joypad. Damn those awful mobile ports.

This. This so very much. PCs can be advanced as hell, but the console are basically PCs from a few years ago, so games have to be downgraded to that tech. If they were to use the full potential of available technology, they would have to make 2 full games.

 

[DaHero]

I'm a PC-only gamer and all I can say is I respect the priorities he has and sticks to them.

At least PC gamers have a fair warning about how it's going to be and can then make educated purchases and how to expect the finished product.

I understand and respect that consoles heavily outweigh myself and other PC gamers when it comes to buying power, but (and this might be a little selfish), I can think of a good reason why porting from console to PC is a bad idea: It won't take advantage of what the PC has to offer.

While there have been a couple exceptions (Chronicles of Riddick being a good example), most of the console -> PC ports I've seen have a noticably different feel than a straight PC-developed title. For example, Mass Effect 2 has the spacebar do about five different functions, rather than allowing us to map all those functions to separate keys. Nothing gamebreaking, but frustrating nonetheless. What -is- aggravating is how low resolution the textures can be in the game, especially on characters. It looks fine on an HDTV, but it looks cringe-worthy on a PC.

If you develop a game for the console with plans to port it to PC later, what business incentive is there to optimize the port with better visuals and customizable controls to take advantage of modern PC's? I can't think of any, as most of your sales will be on console anyway. And that's my problem. If you're going to do multiplatform development, tailor the game to each platform and utilize each platform's strengths.

No the sad thing is that it would have been REALLY easy to do that and they didn't.

No really, take like a day at best, it's just an input control.

 

[JediMB]

~snip~

Misleading article is misleading.

Rage is tech-wise being developed for PC first, and as such the porting goes from PC to consoles.

All Hollenshead is saying is that they have to make sure that the gameplay works with the traditional console gamepad from the start, rather than slimming down the controls later on.

 

[octafish]

And John Carmack said almost the exact opposite.

Well one is a businessman and one is the high lord god of all nerds. I expect with id it won't be a shoddy port, they have the talent and the work ethic to do a good job. I must say I prefer DICE's approach though.

 

[ManiacEskimo]

And they just guaranteed one less sale on the PC until its dirt cheap on a Steam sale.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Yes, water it down in favor of more sales. Its what everybody is doing these days. Thank you for making the gaming industry BETTER and games MORE HIGH QUALITY. Thankfully, we now have GEMS like Modern Warfare 2 just from this wonderful trend.

 

[Worgen]

this reminds me of why we have to wear seat belts in cars but not helmets on motorcycles
see when both issues were brought up here, car drivers had huge numbers but were very unorganized so they couldnt push much political clout but cyclists on the other hand had smaller numbers but were able to organize much easier and form a still opposition to the law and now they dont need helmets

my point is that pc gamers might only be 1/3rd of their upfront consumer base but we tend to be much more organized about things like this and also get much more annoyed by it, not to mention that the life of a game is much longer on the pc then it is on a console, if the makers are smart they can keep a game making money for them forever on the pc but for the most part consoles only make you money for a limited time

 

[ph0b0s123]

-snip-

If you watch the whole interview he is very clear that PC's are 10x more powerful and its shocking how mediocre the difference is given that difference in hardware. Of course it will look better on PC, everything does. The difference is NOT EVEN CLOSE to what you would expect from 10x superior hardware.

It was a good interview he talked a lot aboiut development cycles and how shooting for top teir graphics can hamper your development.

The PC is 10x more powerful but you and Carmack are mystified as to why that difference in power is not being demonstrated...

I thought Carmack was smart. Bitching about the PC not showing it's potential while also stating that your next game will focus mainly on what consoles are capable of. These two things are related you know.

I have heard this put forwards a few times about why with all it's 'supposed' extra power is the PC not showing off that extra power. I wonder why. Maybe if someone develops a title for it that uses all of that power, even if it means that the title won't work on consoles. But that won't happen as it would be financial suicide at the moment. So we are stuck in a situation of the PC under delivering what it is capable of because the market is not big enough to support the investment needed to use that extra power, but due to it under performing the market never gets any bigger. Catch 22 or what.

But console gamers be warned you will be having the same problem soon as there is a bigger gaming market than even yours arriving soon. I expect ID to be mainly focusing on mobile devices next time around, making all their staff play the game with the touch interface before using a joypad. Damn those awful mobile ports.

Nobodies mystified. Way to state what everybody else already said. And there are plenty of games that are pc only and still dont look too good!

That totally did not come over in your comments. And if it has already been said before and you agree, why are you still arguing the toss with your line about PC only titles.

Just because it is PC only, does not mean it has been programmed to fully take advantage of all the PC can now do. Hence a lot of them only having DX 9, like Witcher 2 and Starcraft II. Being a PC only title does not = showing what a PC can do.

Most devs of PC only titles have an eye on moving the title to consoles in the future. The only things that stop a title going to consoles is if consoles are not capable of running the game currently or the title would not work with console controls. There is no exclusivity for PC titles, dev's will always try to bring them to consoles at some point, even if it is a future gen console. That's how it has always been with titles that start on the PC and how it should always be. As a PC gamer I have never wanted to have a monopoly on titles and any PC gamer who does is a d!*k.

 

[Baneat]

Just don't blame pirates when no PC player buys a console port

well doesn't that just compound the problem? those who pirate games discourage developers from trying hard. the more people pirate, the less developers want to support the platform it gets pirated on (which is most often the PC).

The problem with it is the way these numbers are divined.

Pirate-downloads DON'T EQUATE TO LOST SALES, not even close, not even close-to-close

How are they counting the number of pirate downloads? They can't, because it's not counted. If they are, then they are estimating from the loss in expected profits (see above) or just guesstimating in general

The worse the devs do, the more they pirate. You're signing a death sentence to yourself from pirates on your PC platform when you don't consider them important in development. The best way for devs to kick pirates' asses is to work like Valve do, who have no problems at all with piracy on their games. The orange box brought enough value, and custom servers on CSS and TF2 would be hilariously terri-bad compared to the official list. they're also priced much better, and provide real advantages to using it.

But that's fine, I'm not buying console ports anyway, there are enough good games in this world not to need to.

 

[Kilgengoor]

I'm not against designing a game for consoles first, as long as they remember PCs are not consoles either. Case in point: the most recent Star Raiders (beyond its several technical flaws, which are many, too) has one of the most atrocious control schemes ever designed for a PC, and it doesn't even allow to be properly mapped to a Dualshock 2-type PC controller, one of the most popular models that are still being used.

I understand that developers need to start somewhere in order to do their job, but no platform should take priority. Each one has their fortes and particularities, and as such you need to make sure the game works in every one.

 

[The Sane]

There's a difference between developing primarily for consoles and (potentially) blindly crippling the PC version. The fact that they aren't even allowed to touch a keyboard and mouse while developing would worry me, if I had any anticipation for the game in the first place.

 

[Super Toast]

Sure, I think PC to console is the way to go, but come on guys.

Grow up a little.

 

[Baneat]

Just don't blame pirates when no PC player buys a console port

I can tell you right now I won't be purchasing it, yet have plans to play it.

id wants to play the backstabber game, well they can live by that path. Battlefield 3 is proof enough of just how much shit they are full of.

on the EA forums, i though DICE said they were developing BF3 with PCs on mind.
eh, atleast carmack is being honest. i'm not bothering getting the game anyway, not an iD fan.

I think the point he was trying to make is that it's perfectly possible to make a game port to consoles from pc rather than the other way around.

Yes, and if you did that you'd have a good game on both consoles, but I bet it's not worth the effort in $ terms, so they're first-and-foremosting the Xbox one

 

[PettingZOOPONY]

I still don't get their numbers, even if PC is 33% of sales more money goes to the publisher on PC sales VS consoles. On steam the Dev gets 77% of purchase price vs retail were they get 30% of purchase price. To me that means my digital sales are twice as precious as retail sales and I would work on that platform first. But hey we know how good our companies have been run in the past decade in the US.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Fallout and Oblivion seem to do just fine.

Along with Dragon Age, Fable, Torchlight, Castle Crashers, The Witcher 2 (which is coming out on xbox), Demon's Souls, and the upcoming Skyrim.

maybe you mean "classic" RPGs?

They seem to do fine to you because you've never played them on a computer properly. If, lets say, you eat doo-doo for your entire life, then of course you're going to think doo-doo is just fine. Honestly, Fallout, Oblivion, Dragon Age, Fable and Torchlight play much, much, much better on PC. No lie.

That is a matter of opinion. For all you know, Azaraxzealot, might have actually played some RPG's on a PC and finds that they are better on a console.

I use to be both a PC and Console gamer when I had the money, but at the moment it is much cheaper for me to just get games for my Xbox 360 then to overhaul my PC to run games for maybe a year or two.

The reason I had to get out of PC gaming is that it was just getting too expensive because I was having to buy some new piece of hardware every year or year and a half. With that, I would only have the money to get maybe 2 or 3 games a year, and then by the time I had the money to get the latest game I wanted, the latest game needed new hardware to run.

Back to what I was getting at, RPGs on Consoles and PC. When I did both PC and Console, I did platformers and a few other types of games on consoles, and I did RPGs, RTSs, and Shooters on PC.

Well now that I am a relative console only gamer, I play RPGs on my 360. Dragon Age is in your list. That is BioWare. I played KoTOR on my PC back in the day. I found that Dragon Age, like most BioWare RPGs, is set up mostly like KoTor. In battle you pause the action, plan what you need done, and then watch the battle and input special commands as needed.

I got Dragon Age on my 360 and comparing the two experiences, KoTOR on PC and playing Dragon Age on 360, I find that playing RPGs on the console is just slightly better. The reason it is better to me, is that it takes less time to input special commands with a controller than it does with clicking a mouse on the command or finding the button on the keyboard. It may only be a matter of a few seconds difference, but a few seconds can mean life or death in such RPGs.

So in such matters it is a matter of opinion not fact on what platform a game is better on. That is why I wish all this silly fighting about platforms would stop. There are no facts in the matter to be arguing about when it comes to how a game plays.

While I am at it, I will also say that for me, FPSs are better on consoles. It is all a matter of opinion, no facts.

 

[Baresark]

I thought he said the opposite?

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/08/e3-2011-carmack-pcs-an-order-of-magnitude-more-powerful-than-consoles/

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/08/e3-2011-why-rage-will-run-better-on-pc/

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/08/e3-2011-our-john-carmack-interview-covers-rage-the-pc-and-gamma-corrected-anti-aliasing/

"?Now that we?re looking on PCs that have ten times the horsepower of the consoles I?m making a large change in my direction? he says. ?we should be focusing on building things efficiently on the PC and deploying on the consoles.?"

I read all that too.

It's outright stupid to port anything, anywhere. Just because it's multiplatform doesn't mean one audience has to have priority over another. Different development teams for different platforms, but with common elements, such as the graphic artists, writers, ect. Basically, everything in common, but coded specifically for each platform. Don't even get me started on how wrong it is to port from the console to the PC, there are just too many epic failures that way.

 

[thatstheguy]

JESUS CHRIST GUYS, WHY AREN'T YOU ALL WEARING HELMETS AND SHARPING YOUR PITCHFORKS!? YOU'RE ALL IN FLAME TERRITORY! WE HAVE TO FIGHT TO SURVIVE!