Possible cure for so-called "consolitis"

[Weaver]

Everyone will just pirate the games anyway. PC gamers are killing themselves, if they want to fix the problem it is as simple as STOP BREAKING THE LAW YOU [removed for common decency]

Statements like this piss me off. I have 190 steam games and shelf full of boxed PC titles but APPARENTLY I'm still a pirate, just because I like playing on the pc.

 

[Kingsnake661]

Eh, consuel, pc, whatever. I used to play them all pretty equally... now a days i tend to PC game the most, mainly for 2 reasons. the first being i'm a member of a pretty large family, and the main TV, the one that's WORTH playing videogames on, is in a constent state of dispute once i get home from work... So, i can either fight for it, or just play on my PC. I play on my PC.... >.> And second, after years of playing MMORPG's, (better part of the last decade was spent on SWG, CoH, STO, CO, DCO, and FF14....) my joystick mojo is GONE. WAY GONE. Holding an Xbox paddle, feels... akward and combersome, and, the anolong sticks feel slow and sluggish, and I'm just MUCH more confterable with a key board and mouse now.

Both reason are personal reasons, of convience and prefrence. Thus, it's unrealistic of me to procalm PC gaming as the "way". It's just how i prefure to waste my time. *shrug* If other people prefure the Xbox or PS3, good for them.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Everyone will just pirate the games anyway. PC gamers are killing themselves, if they want to fix the problem it is as simple as STOP BREAKING THE LAW YOU [removed for common decency]

Statements like this piss me off. I have 190 steam games and shelf full of boxed PC titles but APPARENTLY I'm still a pirate, just because I like playing on the pc.

I'm a PC gamer too, I know many of us don't pirate, but when you consider the Alan Wake game, which was pretty much a failure, was one of the most pirated games last year, (it was in an escapist article a while ago) I mean there were millions of illegal downloads of it, and when even things like the humble indie bundle were mass pirated, you know there is a large problem there. Sorry, I wrote this late at night, and forgot to consider any tact.

 

[GrinningManiac]

(Disclaimer: I am a die hard PC gamer)
So there is a big fuss recently about "consolitis". I found this argument quite often:

"People need to understand that games development is a business and for any business to survive it needs to sell to as many people as possible."

Seems correct, right? Wrong. Why BMW, Mercedes, Porsche survive so good without selling to as many people as possible? I mean, they obviously cater to a different crowd than, say, Toyota or Honda, but they are still doing quite well.

So why there is only "consolitis", no "Hondalitis", etc? Well, the problem is, it is an industrial norm that PC games and console games sell for the same price (bar $10 MS/Sony royalties). Developers/publishers make same amount of money from PC games and console games. But developing for PC obviously is more costly (both financially and intellectually), because of high demand from PC gamers, complexities and graphic etc.

PC gamers all advocate that gaming on PC is a premium experience (relative to console). So let's charge premium price for a premium experience. Charge more for high quality PC exclusives. Like BMW and Mercedes charge more for their cars than Toyota and Honda's.

Before you call me an idiot, I tell there are already developers out their doing that. See: Blizzard. Blizzard deliver high quality PC exclusives. But they always charge "outrageous" price for their games. Long before even video games on consoles were $50, they charge #60 for their games (Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 for sure; I heard they also charge $60 for Starcraft back then). Even today, the MSRP of Diablo 2 + XPack is still $40. An almost 10 year old game! But if I hadn't bought it, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

OK, that's just my 2 cents.

I'm not going to argue with the meat of the matter, since it's something that I neither care about nor mind which side is right. However, I will say that you should probably drop the economics argument. If the system was that simple then you'd be a billionaire with a revelation like this. Fact is, business, especially on an international level such as with game developers and car manufactorers (sp?) is so insanely complicated that there's a reason we only know of about three dozen succesful car companies out a planet with nearly 7 billion people.

 

[Grickit]

*snip*

1. Yes the *console developers* fight piracy. That's a good thing. With Sony and M$ fighting the piracy, game developers don't have to worry about it. [see also: Valve's comments about the PS3]. That's a big problem on PC right now. So many resources get put into fighting piracy by the game devs because it'd be silly for the OS developer to do so. On a dedicated gaming machine, that's the OS developer's biggest concern.

2. Steam games aren't cheaper. And willingly letting in a monopoly is certainly not the answer. You don't buy all your games on steam either. Also even if these savings existed, they don't make up for a $1000 machine every two years. Lastly: PSN.

3. Yeah I shouldn't have said 90%. That's a made up statistic. I should have said "most" or something.

4. You response really doesn't address the lack of standardization, so I'll elaborate a bit more. When a game developer develops for PS3 they know that every PS3 (or Xbox) meets a minimum standard. Also all PS3s and Xboxes can play their game looking as good as possible.

5. Linux of course. You will find (as I did because I share the hobbies you listed) that web design, word processing, and programming are actually *easier* there. You've got us on 3D modelling though. Open source has produced semi-decent software (Blender is OK) but there's not much in the way of graphics hardware vendor support yet. You'll find that most game console emulators run well there too. Small development companies (Frictional and Mojang are perfect examples) should learn to make their things OS independent.


A bit of a tangent regarding your web design and word processing worries:

Apache2, ColdFusion, and MySQL were much easier to setup when I switched to Ubuntu last year then when I had previously tried (And failed in the case of Apache2) to set them up on Windows.

Also I run MS Office on Ubuntu. It works perfectly. Popular applications like that get a lot of love from the WINE developers.


I did not intend to imply that PC gaming should all die in a fire and everything should be consolized, but I did. Sorry.

But I do think that, contrary to what the OP asserts, consoles are definitely a good thing. I know that, without them, I'd still be forced to use Windows to satiate my love of gaming. I'd still be playing games with the graphics turned down, and I'd still be forced to replace my computer every so many years.

 

[Awexsome]

PC is not inherintly better than consoles. People who think that way are no better than any 360 or PS3 fanboy that think their console is better than the other. You have advantages that consoles don't have. You also have disadvantages that consoles don't have to deal with.

Deal with it.

 

[RA92]

Yes the *console developers* fight piracy. That's a good thing. With Sony and M$ fighting the piracy, game developers don't have to worry about it. [see also: Valve's comments about the PS3]. That's a big problem on PC right now. So many resources get put into fighting piracy by the game devs because it'd be silly for the OS developer to do so. On a dedicated gaming machine, that's the OS developer's biggest concern.

Yeah, Sony's trying to defeat Piracy by using <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.258722-Rumor-Sony-Fighting-PS3-Piracy-With-Install-Keys?page=1>install keys...-_-

But the thing is, it's not piracy that's hurting consoles - it's the used sales market. Gamestop alone racked up $2 billion in used sales last year, none of which went to the devs.

But anyway, the fact is, it's obviously not nearly as bad as the PC. Yet (quoting myself)...

Crysis and FarCry sold 3 million+ copies each on the PC. BF2 sold 6 million+ on all platforms, around 4 million of which were on the PC. Half Life 2 was leaked like Crysis, and yet it outsold Halo:CE. SC2 hit 3 million sales in its first month. Piracy is rampant, but that didn't stop Steam from racking nearly a billion dollars last year. Note, nearly every single franchise has set itself up on the PC, and after they gained enough revenue, they started working on console development kits - which are damn expensive, and the chief reason why small developers usually make PC exclusives only. Piracy has not stopped games like STALKER, Metro and The Witcher sell millions of copies and warrant sequels. These developers didn't even spend money on large ad campaigns, and gained popularity through word of mouth.

If it's a good PC oriented game, it will sell well.

Fact is, making multi-platform titles is an economically sound decision. What I'm trying to point out is that the PC market is not a niche market, and makes up a large portion of overall gamers. So devs should actually give a shit and develop the PC titles alongside the consoles with the same priority.

Steam games aren't cheaper. And willingly letting in a monopoly is certainly not the answer. You don't buy all your games on steam either. Also even if these savings existed, they don't make up for a $1000 machine every two years. Lastly: PSN.

Steam games aren't cheaper... ? You obviously have no experience with Steam. Launch sales are the same as retail, but the prices depreciate fast and weekend bargains are epic. Just hear it out from <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.270796-Has-anyone-else-here-actually-migrated-from-console-gaming-to-PC-gaming#10411795>this guy. He owns over a hundred games on Steam but he spent only around $300. Hell, they gave away Portal, Unreal Tournament 3 and Alien Swarm for free at a weekend bargain.

Also, Steam might have the larger share of the digital distribution market, but it doesn't have monopoly. We have GG, D2D and GoG as well. It's PSN and XBL that have monopolies on consoles. And MS doesn't stop itself from <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.271491-Microsoft-Defends-Games-on-Demand-Pricing>abusing it's position.

And about the $1000 every two year bit... did you buy completely new prebuilt PCs every time? That is madness...

Follow this <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.272899-Want-to-build-a-PC-on-a-budget-Meet-the-500-gaming-rig#10531988>thread about how to build an absolutely new high end rig for $500. Of course, when you upgrade after around 3 years, it's not going to cost another $500, since you're not going to replace your monitor, casing, keyboard etc. All you'll probably be buying is a new GPU. Also, the thread is very interesting in the regard that the discussion basically ends up showing that in the long run, the cost differences between the platforms aren't that much after you buy peripherals and games.


You response really doesn't address the lack of standardization, so I'll elaborate a bit more. When a game developer develops for PS3 they know that every PS3 (or Xbox) meets a minimum standard. Also all PS3s and Xboxes can play their game looking as good as possible.

Actually, it's tougher to develop games for Xbox and PS3 simultaneously. XBox360 has the same x86 architecture as the PC, so it's easier to develop these two side by side. Remember what Gabe Newell (since you brought in Valve) had to say about the PS3 architecture?

Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created... it's harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions. - Gabe Newell

Also, dedicated PC GPUs all share the same API, so it's not like the days of Rage 3D, VESA drivers or "special editions" of games that would only run on specific video hardware anymore. As for hardware optimization, I would have to point at Valve again. They have a small 200+ development team, and if they can manage it, the others are just being lazy. CoD:BlOps, for example, was poorly optimized for the PC. But it wasn't like that was the only front they failed at; it was a poor port altogether.

Linux of course. You will find (as I did because I share the hobbies you listed) that web design, word processing, and programming are actually *easier* there. You've got us on 3D modelling though. Open source has produced semi-decent software (Blender is OK) but there's not much in the way of graphics hardware vendor support yet. You'll find that most game console emulators run well there too.

Well, here's the thing. CSS5 refuses to run well on any processor that isn't multicore, not to forget at least 1GB RAM. Work with Blender's SubSurface tool on a low-end PC, and it'll start lagging after Level 2. Hell, even Google Sketchup slows down when you're working with too many polygons and groups if your hardware isn't powerful enough. Besides that, I gave up on learning Python to work on GameBlender a while back, and am currently working on UDK, which itself requires a high end machine. What you're asking me to do is maintain a separate pretty powerful PC and console simultaneously. Why should I bother doing that when I can throw a couple of more bucks on my rig and make that the centre of everything?

I'm learning Dreamweaver and WAMP, and they both work fine on Windows.


Small development companies (Frictional and Mojang are perfect examples) should learn to make their things OS independent.



Linux hasn't measured up yet in terms of ROI compared to the other platforms. Even Unity doesn't provide Linux compatibility. And small companies have even less resources to spend on making something multiplatform.

But I do think that, contrary to what the OP asserts, consoles are definitely a good thing...

For the record, I never attacked anyone for using a console. It's perfectly possible that people wouldn't have the patience or time to go through all the trouble of building a PC like researching, purchasing individual hardware, getting intimate with the computer's innards etc. Whenever there's a shitty PC port, I always blame it on the devs, not the consoles themselves. And frankly, there are a lot of console exclusives I would love to get my hands on to (mostly Atlus titles).

While I can perfectly understand why some might buy an XBox360 or PS3, I'm going to stay with my open platform and <url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4w50Gs5jZ0>RTS games, thank you.

 

[XzarTheMad]

You can't compare cars and games. There's a big difference between a Mercedes and a Ford. There's no difference between Borderlands on the PC and on the Xbox (or whatever console it's on), apart from how you control it.

 

[GonzoGamer]

PC gamers all advocate that gaming on PC is a premium experience (relative to console). So let's charge premium price for a premium experience. Charge more for high quality PC exclusives. Like BMW and Mercedes charge more for their cars than Toyota and Honda's.

Just don't.
The last thing they need is encouragement to charge us more. They already got the idea that console gamers are suckers and to a certain extent we are. The last thing we need is for them to charge all sorts of weird premiums for PC gamers.

Do you want to pay a monthly fee to play games online? They'll do it.

 

[Madara XIII]

That's just stupid.
There is NO reason to think that PC gaming is better than console gaming other than a bunch of elitist pricks spouting out how superior their platform is.
Sometimes, I'm ashamed to be a PC gamer, given how terrible the community is.

*Cries tears of Joy* FINALLY! Finally a pc gamer who doesn't look down on use console players :'D

 

[Wolfram23]

My guess is that making them more expensive would push more people to pirate. Lower the price, and sell more units.

 

[gustcq]

:O daring topic! flamewars alert! >.>

 

[i2esol]

Everyone will just pirate the games anyway. PC gamers are killing themselves, if they want to fix the problem it is as simple as STOP BREAKING THE LAW YOU [removed for common decency]

A lot of people believe in the idea of paying for something when you know it's worth it. Plus, it's nearly impossible to find older titles outside of the piracy-sphere. Hell, I personally downloaded Modern Warfare 2 days before it was released then bought it the day it came out, because I actually liked it. There are other games that I have bought the day that they have come out and regretted it (IE: Bulletstorm). While Consoles have a return policy for in-store credit us PC gamers lack such returns policy, because once the CD key is used it's used forever. There's always a reason for piracy, because people give it one. Whether it's the corporations adding DRMs that require internet access to play (IE: Assassin's Creed 2) or the fact that you're not willing to fork over the $60 for a hyped title that you're "just not sure about". We PC gamers are a breed that will never die.

 

[Wolfram23]

snip
Seems correct, right? Wrong. Why BMW, Mercedes, Porsche survive so good without selling to as many people as possible? I mean, they obviously cater to a different crowd than, say, Toyota or Honda, but they are still doing quite well.

snip

PC gamers all advocate that gaming on PC is a premium experience (relative to console). So let's charge premium price for a premium experience. Charge more for high quality PC exclusives. Like BMW and Mercedes charge more for their cars than Toyota and Honda's.

snip
OK, that's just my 2 cents.

Uh, yeah, it's a premium experience because I've spent over $2000 on my PC hardware. Your car comparison is completely wrong. We're already paying the "BMW" price for the hardware, we don't need to get charged extra for games - more analagous to being charged extra for gas, and at toll booths, and for insurance. (insurance is too variable to claim it is higher since my Acura RSX-S insurance is $285/month. And I have to use Premium gas)

 

[Meggiepants]

I find it a tad insulting that you assume it's more intellectually demanding to program games for the PC - but then i read further and see that one of your reasonings for this is because of graphics. So, I'm okay, no harm no fowl. It's hard to be insulted by such a ridiculous statement.

That's incredibly stupid. Also, BMW and Porsche to mention some sell more because it's an actual item that denotes status (read: douchebag), and helps you get laid. I dare you to try to pick up ANYONE by saying your games are all on PC.

Hee hee! I would love to hear the pick up line.

"Hey baby, wanna head back to my place, I'll show you how I put my Monster Cables into an Alienware box. Oh yeah."

Bow chikka wow-wow!

 

[Something Amyss]

Does that mean us console gamers should get a discount for every inferior port?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Everyone will just pirate the games anyway. PC gamers are killing themselves, if they want to fix the problem it is as simple as STOP BREAKING THE LAW YOU [removed for common decency]

When a publisher decides to develop for a platform, the piracy rate is a factor, but not *THE* factor. Mass-appeal is what drives that forward, contrary to what the OP is claiming.
Those high class vehicle companies cater to a very very select few, making them a niche' market, and while they remain profitable, they will never compare to the profits of mass-product. It's why their vehicles cost 6 figures each despite being, for all practical purposes, marginally better than most 50k luxury vehicles.

Consoles are easy to set up and use; this creates mass appeal by default (and part of where the elitism claim against PC players comes from; it does take more work to get a PC game to function...well, at least back when we had actual games for the PC rather than shitty ports of 360 titles).
If PC were somehow the stronger market in terms of appeal, you can bet publishers would move to it in a heartbeat; piracy or no piracy. I say that with 100% certainty.

What the OP is getting at is "Niche appeal", and if you know how the gaming business works today, "niche" is a very dirty word. It means "Don't back this in any serious capacity, because we have no guarantees of massive profits."
Example: It's why we haven't seen many space flight games DESPITE both consoles and PCs offering very effective controls (apart from a traditional joystick/flight-yoke controller). There are absolutely no technical details standing in the way. It's just that nobody wants to fund it because there is no guarantee on returns, and remember, money means EVERYTHING in an industry. Creative license is a tool to be wielded to con the masses out of their cash, nothing else. If you can do it without having to spend extra on creativity, all the better.

You can diversify and turn tidy, albeit small profits, or you can do what is proven to work because the masses will buy your game up regardless if it's something familiar and popular (unless you fail to meet those expectations).

PC gaming has become so neglected by the current AAA gaming industry that anything made for it is either going to be Casual Crack (Zynga is worth 10 Billion...that's just fucking depressing) or niche' by default.

Fuck, even the sole game I'm looking at this year (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) is being developed by a second-rate company because the main game creation staff is too busy making the console version.

Keep in mind, this all stems from accessibility; the PC is a technically superior console (no matter how MovieBob or anyone else tries to rationalize it), but that technical edge means nothing if it isn't popular.

Just as an aside, if you ask me, PC Gaming effectively "died" (or ceased to be a primary gaming market) in 2007.

 

[Super Toast]

snip

So we should pay more for our games? No offence, but that is by far the worst idea I have ever heard on this website, bar none. How would it benefit anyone, in any way? People would just pirate or avoid the game, thus screwing over developers/publishers, while honest, hard-working folk are forced to pay more just to play on their platform of choice. Everybody loses. Also, comparing the car industry to the gaming industry is like comparing Bambi to Cthulhu. The two industries are completely different.