Question on PC and Console Games

[TheScottishMexican42]

My friend who I can only describe as a 'PC elitist' is claiming that any game on a console, that includes exclusives on the Xbox 360 and PS3, can be played on a PC. He claims that it's as simple as putting the game in and messing with some software. This is his arguments against consoles, which he claims as "scum".

Is he talking crap, or is there some kind of truth?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well you can now actually find emulators for 360 and PS3, however these require absurd amounts of power on the designated PC, they don't work for all games and they cause massive glitches when they do work (graphics problems, sound distortions, missing movies, freezes, crashes, input lag,...)

All in all not ideal or advisable, most certainly not cheap, but technically possible.

 

[TelHybrid]

Emulating 360/PS3 games on a standard consumer rig?

...pahahahaha!

Oh wait he was serious...


Hahahahahahahahahaha.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Hell even emulating the Wii takes a shitload of horsepower. We won't be seeing any competent emulation of 360 and PS3 titles for a long time.

 

[PFCboom]

So... take a console exclusive game, throw it in a DVD-ROM tray, and futz with the code until it works. That's about it? Well, he's half right. Err... a quarter right. A little right. Okay, the only thing he got right is that one has to mess with software, if you want to make it work... without an emulator.
Nope, your friend is an idiot. Oh well.

 

[Doom972]

Emulation is possible for games of older consoles, all the way up to and including the PS2/Xbox/GC/DC generation.

Getting a current-gen game to work on the PC is theoretically possible, and practically unlikely. I guess that by "messing with some software" he either meant using/making and emulator or reverse engineering the game.
There are no functioning emulators of current-gen consoles, and reverse engineering is practically impossible without the source code.

So depending on his exact phrasing, he might be full of crap. Did he say that it's possible in theory or that it's just possible?

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

While you could find equivalent games, no, your friend is an idiot. There are emulators that can run some games but require a huge amount of resources. Dolphin is the most recent gen but that is the WII so the power draw isn't huge. You need multiple times the amount of hardware power to play games at the same level as the dedicated hardware. Almost(there is some games that just never work right) can play everything up to the 6th generation is a guarantee with different results. After that is a guessing game.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

It's sort of that simple...however, you need to emulate the console first, THEN process the game. The amount of power required to do so, especially this passing generation, is absurd. It's a pain just to run some PS2 games through emulation, ever try Black on even a decent rig? It ran like complete garbage when using a GTX 480 and a decent quad core. The first Killzone as well. I did see a friend emulate a Wii once, even using a Wiimote with it, which I thought was pretty impressive.

Anyway, I can't say he was entirely wrong, however he's talking as if it's easy to do that for the PS3 and 360 games, and at this point, it just isn't

 

[Orthus]

Emulating 360/PS3 games on a standard consumer rig?

...pahahahaha!

Oh wait he was serious...


Hahahahahahahahahaha.

Standard consumer rigs shouldn't even be bought by PC gamers. custom built PC gaming rigs however could with emulators.

customer(even enthusiast hardware)would have issues with it due to the overhead you would need to keep everything silky smooth before any kind of emulation errors.

 

[Tanakh]

My friend who I can only describe as a 'PC elitist' is claiming that any game on a console, that includes exclusives on the Xbox 360 and PS3, can be played on a PC. He claims that it's as simple as putting the game in and messing with some software. This is his arguments against consoles, which he claims as "scum".

Is he talking crap, or is there some kind of truth?

No, he is 100% right. Any video game available in the market can be played on a decently build gaming PC right now. There is actually proof that even the Xbox One video games were ran on win 7, the only question is if it was on custom drivers or not as you can see here:

- http://www.vg247.com/forum/topic.php?id=16181

- http://wololo.net/2013/06/17/xbox-ones-e3-demos-werent-run-on-the-xbox-one-or-were-they/

Now here's the thing, he is right, totally, however it doesn't mean he can run them. Because the console companies, though they could release an emulator or a devkit to run their games in PCs, won't do it.

What he is saying is akin to "Any guy with basic chemical education can mix the ingredients to duplicate perfectly a Coca Cola"... ignoring the fact that the difficult thing is not mixing but knowing them. So, it is as simple as "putting the game in and messing with some software", as long as you are a computer science god, software architect maestro and a retro engineering genius, have the console and time to work on it.

What he can do however with current public emulation is run up to the PS2 era games pretty much flawlessly.

PD. It is interesting how many people here seem to think there's a technical impossibility with this task, when it's mostly just a reverse engineer and optimization problem, though a very complex one.

 

[Weaver]

Emulation for current gen doesn't exit to my knowledge.
However, on my (admittedly high end) machine I can emulate Gamecube and Wii games at a solid 60fps.

Also, you can't just put the disc in. Most console games will only read on very specific DVD/BluRay models.

 

[clippen05]

Hell even emulating the Wii takes a shitload of horsepower. We won't be seeing any competent emulation of 360 and PS3 titles for a long time.

Emulating Wii can be done on 6-7 year old tech... good 5-6 year old tech, but 5-6 year old tech nonetheless.

 

[TheScottishMexican42]

Thanks for the replies. I didn't think there was a ton of truth to his statements. He claims they could all be ported over with ease so, my general arguement is that if its possible, why isn't he playing Halo 4 or The Last of Us?

 

[Joccaren]

Thanks for the replies. I didn't think there was a ton of truth to his statements. He claims they could all be ported over with ease so, my general arguement is that if its possible, why isn't he playing Halo 4 or The Last of Us?

This is a different issue. Yes, they could all be ported over with ease. Its no too hard. A bit expensive and time consuming, but nowhere near the difficulty and expense of creating a game, and they'd sell quite well on the PC.

The reason Halo 4 and TLOU are not on PCs is simple; they're meant to sell consoles. Microsoft, developing Halo, made the conscious decision to not port it to PCs in order to try and force Halo fans to purchase Xbox 360s. Why only earn $60 per game when you could earn $360 [No pun intended, really ]?
TLOU I'm not as sure about, but I wouldn't be suprised if Sony payed the publisher/developer a fair sum of money to keep it only on the PS3, so that people would have to buy a PS3 to play it.

That's the reason for console exclusives about 80% of the time - publishing deals with console manufacturers to try and force people to purchase consoles. Its why so many people hate the concept.
Of course, 20% is still because the developers either CBF, or don't see it as worthwhile, porting the game to the PC.

 

[AuronFtw]

As others have said, PCs can (with a midrange tower, nothing too fancy) easily run anything up to PS2 era given simple software that anyone can find. Currently, PCs *can* run 360/PS3 games with every bit as much power if not more (ports say hi) but the dev/publisher restrictions on the discs and in the software make it so you can't just pop it into your PC and game away. That's where problems start; you have to "siphon" or use up a certain percentage of your computer's processing power just running the kit to run the game on (basically emulating an operating system, in simple terms), and if that kit is reverse engineered poorly or designed inefficiently, you can be left with not enough processing power to run the game at full pelt.

That notwithstanding, it'll be figured out eventually. Once upon a time PS2 games were "impossible" to emulate on PCs, but now you can set it up from scratch in under an hour - even playing your legit PS2 games by popping the discs in the tower. FFX has some great PC mods, particularly the high-res ones, great looking game now.

But yeah, that's why console-only games are such a pisser. It's not that they can't be run on PCs, because all games can (and indeed the "next-gen" xbone games were all being previewed from a PC), it's that the publishers have deals with console manufacturers to fuck over consumers and hold games hostage. Most of the time these games are hardly worth playing; there are typically better versions of them available on PC anyway, but once in awhile a great game like TLoU comes out and makes us mad all over again at greedy publishers and their bullshit sales tactics. My PC is tremendously more powerful than a PS3 now, and as soon as the next gen consoles hit and the specs on those are actually confirmed, I'll probably upgrade a few pieces and have it be more powerful than those, too. But fuck publishers trying to force me to buy their bullshit proprietary console to play a single game. Not gonna happen.

 

[LAGG]

Thanks for the replies. I didn't think there was a ton of truth to his statements. He claims they could all be ported over with ease so, my general arguement is that if its possible, why isn't he playing Halo 4 or The Last of Us?

As people explained, it's all about exclusivity deals made with the manufacturer to force people buying the console.

Besides that, while TLOU would find a good audience on PC because it has something to offer, I believe Halo 4 would promptly sink against the FPS concurrence and the PC players taste on the genre (the time scale for example would have to upped at least to 150% because it looks like the game is eternally in slow-motion effect), so it wouldn't really be a good business choice anyway.

Unreal Tournament 3 was somewhat a failure on PC and it has awesome mod support but people still said it's boring and utterly slow and "consolized" in comparison to the previous entry in the series. So Halo 4 wouldn't do any better than it did.

Spoiler: Unreal Tournament 3

Spoiler: Unreal Tournament 2004

Spoiler: Halo 4

So some games aren't a good bet on some platforms anyway, but that also has to do with exclusivity: if you know it'll be exclusive you make the game for that specific platform only.

 

[UnderCoverGuest]

I'm going to try to use a language example here.
PC Games on PC speak the same language. Xbox Games on Xbox speak their own language. When you give an Xbox Game to a PC, they don't know what the other is saying.

Emulators are translators, they know what the Xbox Game is saying, and convince the XBox that it's talking to another Xbox, while secretly translating for the PC. But this takes a lot of energy and effort, and it's almost impossible to find a translator--and even once you've found one, they'll usually mix up some words here and there.

As far as technology is concerned, your friend is right. PC's are the fundamental basis for technological advances. It's where the programming is made after all, and is most capable of rendering whatever is designed on it. Consoles are limited, they do not upgrade. Some consoles lately have been around for five years. My computer, once able to run Crysis in late 2007, is still able to run games made today, in 2013. This just shows that the technological advances have been very minor, but in some cases they have even stepped back: Crysis (November 2007) had a superb physics engine--Far Cry 3 (December 2012), a spiritual successor, has no such engine, and has instead resulted towards less expensive ways of mimicking physics.

I'm all about advancement, and I have the time and money to invest in a gaming PC. I will always be biased against consoles, not simply because they're "casual", but because my experience with PC games has been more immersive, more customizable, more advanced, and has provided infinitely more freedom than anything on a gaming console can offer.

As far as just putting in an Xbox 360 game into his computer however, he's speaking from the realm of fantasy on that one. For now at least, though personally I can't wait to get my hands on one of the newer Smackdown Vs Raw games and emulate it on PC, that'd be awesome. Stuck playing the PS2 versions right now--fun, but lacking more updated graphics.

 

[dfphetteplace]

Emulation? Not that easy. PS3 and 360 games are not yet able to be emulated. But, there is no reason there is any game that cannot be ported to a PC.

 

[loc978]

As many have said, technically possible, but extremely difficult. Still waiting to be able to emulate a PS3 so I can play Red Dead Redemption with a fuckin' mouse. The Last of Us is now on the same list. I imagine I'll have the piracy brigade breathing down my neck despite owning the games and the console they're meant to be played on. I just find that thumbsticks and crosshairs don't mix.

It's only a matter of time before someone cracks it. If only it were as easy as the original Xbox was... but that thing was running Windows CE, Sony's OSes are a bit more alien to PC architecture.

Hopefully next gen we won't have these problems, since everyone's running on x86 hardware. Hopefully Sony has a similar rig to Microsoft's demo PC... and the software is... available... at some point.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Your friend may be correct but there's no reason PC should have everything and consoles get shit all.

I can never make sense of the people who claim Console manufacturers are "holding games hostage", especially when those games are owned by the manufacturers themselves and their own reason to sell you their console and games.