Floppertje said:
It all comes down to trust. yeah, they probably COULD find a way to hide the money, but I (and the majority of backers) believe they don't WANT to. I'm believe they genuinely want to make the game as good as possible and not fuck over their customers. If that's what they wanted to do, why wouldn't they just go with a major publisher?
The exclusivity isn't about alienating anyone, it's like they say: the game won't run on consoles. It's not that we don't want anyone without a top-end pc to be able to play it, it's that we want it to be incredibly good and a side effect of that is that consoles can't run it. Also, I think one of their problems was that consoles are too restrictive for what CIG wants to do.
You've said in two paragraphs what I've been trying to for multiple posts
josemlopes said:
I dont really agree that its much game to handle, tone down some stuff and make console specific HUDs and menus and there, its the console version.
Not saying that keeping it exclusive for PC is bad (I really prefer that they focus on making the game be as good as it can in on system instead of trying to make a PC game with stuff meant for consoles) but to say that a console version is impossible doesnt seem true to me as the thing that seems to keep them from reaching it is too much work or having to re-work specific things for each version (having a very specific control system for PC and then the other one for gamepads, something like Warthunder, and then the same with the HUD and menus).
In terms of visuals its just toning down a lot of stuff unless the engine is pure crap.
I think at that point it's an entirely different game. Even if you entirely excuse the fact that the crowdfunded money to date is meant to pay for a PC game (ie. not for the development of a console port, though there's nothing to stop such a thing in the future perhaps from profits raised by game sales post-release), and you excuse that there are no plans to do so, as others, the OP and the dev themselves have said the game currently being developed couldn't run on the latest consoles.
Consider Ryse, a Crytek game (a company at least previously renowned for making good looking games), a current gen game and XBone exclusive. This article [http://wccftech.com/ryse-polygon-count-comparision-aaa-titles-crysis-star-citizen/] describes that the main character is (the writer believes) rendered in 80k polygons, the most of any game to date. That isn't entirely unqualified however since he'll almost never be drawn with 80k polygons since the Cry Engine will usually render it much lower for performance. Also, it makes no mention of the rest of the world which likely will have been made lower to compensate, and the NPCs who will lack the same detail. From the article "Of course with Cry Engines Active Culling System, the actual polys being rendered at any given frame will be considerably less." Ryse also runs at 900p/30FPS. I run everything at 1080p/60FPS.
I think Forza 4 had many 1million polygon car models (not certain on opponent cars or only player cars) as well as car interiors which is a massive addition, but likely it's compensated for by lower quality tracks/scenery, etc.
SC will have 100k poly characters (all characters), 300k small ships all the way up to 7 million poly cruisers. I don't think even my factory overclocked GTX780 could do render that with max everything, and my card is more powerful than all three current gen consoles combined (and cost more than 1.5x any one one of them). The models will be the most of any commercial video game ever.
The models are too detailed, the textures too high res, the game will have more functions than can be mapped to a 10 button joypad (even including D-Pad and clicky thumbsticks) and likely the physics will grind them to a halt, without even factoring in the size of any given "map" or number of objects/players rendered at once. It would need to be cut down in every department and the engine backend rewritten to support different hardware, new server farms for each hardware platform, etc. About the only thing such a console port would have in common with the original would be the name and genre, otherwise it's practically an entirely new game.
Ultimately it is a niche title and may not appeal to many console gamers either. If there was real demand for space sims, someone would be creating one. Consider that most PC RTS games never come to console either, games like Civ5, Starcraft 2 or MOBAs like DotA2, LoL, MMOs like WoW, etc. It's a different kind of game not designed for the hardware or interface.
