Skyrim to be a console port which "shouldn't be too hard"

[Rack]

People have no faith at all. I should start bitching about PC ports to consoles. The Witcher 2 is going to suck so much on the 360, because it was on a PC first! The Xbox has no keyboard or mouse! This can't work at all!

Seriously though, calm the fuck down. Bethesda is a good developer, even if the UI is crappy the modding tools should hopefully be out with the game and I'm pretty sure there would be a fix for the UI up within the first two days of the game being out.

Witcher 2 is an Xbox 360 game ported to PC in advance. It's designed to be played with a pad on a tv screen, it just so happened the PC version was used as a testbed to iron out the bugs.

 

[xXGeckoXx]

What was so bad about the pc version of ME2? Everything worked fine for me.

As much as I love ME2, there were 2 glaring problems with the UI.
1) Lack of weapon hotkeys
2) Space bar does 15 different things (very slight exaggeration)
3) Mouse sensitivity is drastically altered depending on whether you're in combat or not. This one is anathema to anyone who calibrates the mouse by making sure they can make precise turns with their eyes shut.

I was a little annoyed by the 8 power hotkey limit, but hey .. 8 isn't too restrictive a limit.

Edit:
I just realised saying there are 2 problems then putting 3 numbers may have been silly.
1 & 2 were actual issues. 3 only affects crazy people like me.

Hmm some of the stuff notably the new shift menu was definitely more console oriented. And that spacebar thing (Y U NO ABLE TO MAP CONTROLS).

OT: This is ridiculous, Looking at the trailers so far I see no reason why the controls should be shitty on PC. And how do we define a console port nowdays huh? Bethesda themselves claim that the game is much better on PC (miles ahead graphically).

 

[Dr. wonderful]

Well look on the bright side. You guys get all the cool mods and will ultimately end up with the better game.

What the badass here said.


You PC guys get to mod, I'm stuck with the orginal game.

...But on this case, it's not a bad thing.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

Let's hope it's not as bad as with Rage's driver problem on launch. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this.

 

[Scizophrenic Llama]

People have no faith at all. I should start bitching about PC ports to consoles. The Witcher 2 is going to suck so much on the 360, because it was on a PC first! The Xbox has no keyboard or mouse! This can't work at all!

Seriously though, calm the fuck down. Bethesda is a good developer, even if the UI is crappy the modding tools should hopefully be out with the game and I'm pretty sure there would be a fix for the UI up within the first two days of the game being out.

Witcher 2 is an Xbox 360 game ported to PC in advance. It's designed to be played with a pad on a tv screen, it just so happened the PC version was used as a testbed to iron out the bugs.

The Witcher was developed on the PC, The Witcher 2 was developed on the PC with consoles in mind. Not just a port, for it to be a port it would have to have been actually released on the consoles first. It wouldn't take this long to release on the consoles if it was just a port anyway, even with the whole Namco-Bandai fiasco.

 

[Rack]

Witcher 2 is an Xbox 360 game ported to PC in advance. It's designed to be played with a pad on a tv screen, it just so happened the PC version was used as a testbed to iron out the bugs.

The Witcher was developed on the PC, The Witcher 2 was developed on the PC with consoles in mind. Not just a port, for it to be a port it would have to have been actually released on the consoles first. It wouldn't take this long to release on the consoles if it was just a port anyway, even with the whole Namco-Bandai fiasco.

True, I wasn't being entirely literal as you can't port something before you're written it. I'm just pointing out that the game hasn't been compromised on 360 as a result of its PC background in the same way Skyrim has. Given the series roots I can see why PC fans are a bit aggrieved by this. On the flip-side Skyrim looks awesome and is packed with content paid for by all those extra sales on consoles so if the price of that is having to download a UI mod a few days after release I'm totally fine with that situation.

 

[evilneko]

Well, so much for Skyrim. This is the kind of shit that's killing PC gaming.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Apparently someone hasn't played stock Oblivion. Skyrim will be the same.

Exactly what I was going to say. The last entry in the series that was focused on the PC version was Morrowind; it's been a console series with PC ports ever since.

A Friend of mine is a linguist and right now he's searching for a word stronger then "Duh!".

Even if the Consoles weren't the biggest market for games now, games on the PC wouldn't look much different. They would look the same, if they decide to work, which they don't for some people.

PC and console games look similar. The time and money that goes into making a game are huge and converting a game is, compared to making it, ridiculously easy. On older consoles, you had to remake your entire game sometimes.

Xbox360 is pretty much the biggest market right now, ports to PC are relatively easy today, partly because the games still look fine; there wont be a graphical wow effect with the next console cycle. The games could look better, but now we're at a point where one would have to put rather large amounts of money into a project to make it look slightly better.

As a PC gamer, i like this "console game". The Predecessor "Oblivion" looked kinda half-assed on both platforms sometimes. Xbox users roaming the country became aware of the fact that the amount of ram in their consoles is rather limited and PC Players saw giant menu screens made to be readable on old TV Screens. From a mile away. Bethesda is considerate like that.

Make a Version for consoles and a PC Port that runs stable without too much drm, modders are already discussing how to fix the Issues that will pop up most likely.

I'd like to point out that people said this about the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation as well, and look at how much of a "wow" moment the first few screens of the current gen were. There is actually quite a bit of room for graphical improvement currently, and it's mostly in areas like lighting and skin textures, areas that don't add much of an artistic challenge, but do take a lot of processing power to make look right. Besides, videogames are still pretty cheap to make considering what they sell for and how deep the market penetration is. An average blockbuster movie costs about $100 million to make, and goes for about $10 a ticket, or $15 a DVD. A freakin' huge AAA game costs about $50 million to make, and goes for $60 a copy, or $120 is you live in Australia. The cost of making games has quite a ways to go before it becomes prohibitively expensive, and the price to buy actually has quite a ways to drop before it hits something approaching fair.

 

[Joccaren]

It is the 'easy port' that gets me here. Whilst I hope that this guy is talking with the 'I know everything that must be done because I've successfully ported a game before that had no problems on the PC despite being made for consoles' (There have been such games).
What I want from the port for it to be 'good':
1. Upped Graphical Components. I doubt they do not have this done, and if they don't, they really shouldn't be a AAA title maker. Ignoring that large a part of what your target audience wants is stupid.
2. No bugs that consoles do not have. If we have bugs, and consoles do not, and other PC only games don't have them (Because I realise that some hardware configs cause problems for even purely PC games), then the port was not done properly, simple as that, and the team has failed to deliver their product properly. It is just not acceptable for a port from any platform to another to have bugs that are a result of the port. It should have been tested, made sure there were 0 bugs anyway (Though that is very hard, but there should not be ANY game breaking bugs), and they should be 100% sure that it will work when they sell it. Buying a TV that doesn't work will get you mad at whoever sold it to you and demanding a replacement, I do not see why games should be any different.
3. Proper PC UI and Hotkeys. ME2 was shit in this department. PC became annoying to use its interface on as we didn't have the right hotkeys. We were missing the J for journal, C for Codex, the weapons # buttons, the U for squad level up, and the controls we got were screwed up (Space (Or E as I remapped mine to) to run, take cover, leave cover, vault over cover, use and pretty much every non-movement function, other than the pause screen. I know this was on consoles too, but I can't help but feel that they did this due to the limited number of buttons on a controller, whether they could have utilised more buttons or not). I want to have my inventory, quests, maps, EVERY side menu open able from a hotkey on my keyboard, hotkeys for everything I might ever need them for. I don't care if I sound entitled, the game is on the PC and should have hotkeys. Some games manage to do it perfectly, so this game should not be an exception.

I am now somewhat sceptical about pre-ordering this game. I am not quite at the point of ;not going to do it', as they may pull this off, but if I see more evidence that the PC version will be screwed over, then it is unlikely I will waste my money pre-ordering without proof that my fears are groundless (I am shown a video with someone on a PC using all the hotkeys, with a reasonable interface, no game breaking bugs, and some damn nice graphics).

Really, both sides in this are overreacting and turning this into a PC vs Console war, which everyone already knows PCs win in Hardware and Consoles win in Popularity. I know this is the Internet, but I'm starting to think that instead of a Sport forum, we should get a PS3/Xbox/PC battle forum...

 

[weker]

I don't care and speaks nothing for the product itself, the game could be amazing on PC even if it is a port, and further more I don't care and wish PC gamers would stop complaining just because we don't have 4 times the graphical power of a console. Most computers can play games better then console, while a smaller amount can play better then that, so it doesn't surprise me games devs develop for consoles as most their key sales are on those platforms, and to get the thumbs up from PC hardcore they need to fork out for even more graphical fidelity.