Players Furious Over Buggy GTA IV PC Release

Jupix writes "It took Rockstar most of a year to port Grand Theft Auto IV to the PC, and while they claim this was because they wanted polish and quality with their PC release, it appears the result has been less than satisfactory. Players all over the internet are furious over numerous bugs in the release, ranging from nonfunctional internet registration and graphics glitches to completely inoperative installations. One of the game's largest retailers, Steam, has reportedly gone so far as to start handing out refunds to hordes of unsatisfied (and no doubt uncomfortably noisy) customers."

Comments

I'm slightly astonished

[James_Duncan8181]

One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...I'm just not sure where all the extra bugs would arise. The actual game logic and assets should be identical.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to pick a target to blame it would probably be the DRM.

Fortunately the good people of the scene have provided a quality release that doesn't suffer from such problems.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[ModernGeek]

An easy port have been the case with the original xbox, as it was just a pentium 3 computer running a windows varient, but the new xbox 360 uses a power pc chip (used in macintoshes from the mid 90s until 2006) with an os that is based off of an early version of windows nt that supported power pc prcessors. I imagine the differences in modern pc architecture and the modern xbox actually make porting a game quite difficult if it is not written on a common platform that runs on all systems, which I assume because of it's nature, gta 4 is not

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[MrHanky]

As a modern geek, you should realise that CPU architecture doesn't matter a lot when coding in modern languages.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Amphetam1ne]

It's the DRM. Many of the crashing problems seem to be Securom crashing, which causes the game client to exit to desktop imediately. It also needs you to upgrade to the latest Games For Windows release, which doesn't support Vista64 at the moment. So that's all the hardcore gamers with 4GB+ of ram out of the picture.

Only cost them $200k to inconvenience players to such a high degree.... I hope everyone who's having problems returns it to the store. High levels of returns make the distributer very uneasy, which in turn should send a message to the publisher.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[forgoil]

Unofrtunatly I can't show my displeasure quite as easily. I don't want to buy the game with that kind of DRM on it, no way no how no never. No game will ever be so good that I will put that kind of crap on my own computer. It's kind of ironic because I've decided to not pirate any games any more. And I buy games online these days (appstore, steam), and I loved GTA 3 so I want to play GTA 4. So now they have made me seriously contemplating getting through other channels. Idiots :( I might get the game at a discount on a console in the future (don't own any current generation ones), but I hardly think they make much on those.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[willisbueller]

Dude, we aren't talking about a note taking program.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[cbrocious]

I'm no DRM fan (I've been working against it for years, e.g. El Tunes and PyMusique), but there's no reason that it'd cause these problems, outside of the authorization problems. Once the game has started, the most the DRM will be doing is decrypting game code, if it's not decrypted entirely at loadtime.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[jonaskoelker]

I imagine the differences in modern pc architecture and the modern xbox actually make porting a game quite difficult if it is not written on a common platform that runs on all systems

Such as C++?

Here's a quick-and-dirty proof: debian has tons of stuff written in C++, and it runs on $BIGNUM architectures. I don't write fetch_to_L1_cache() or kill_instruction_pipeline() calls in my code.

Sure, you can add inline assembly, but you can also ifdef it out and write replacement C++ on incompatible archs.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[cbrocious]

Assembly will only be used for small, high-cost operations. These pieces are small enough that if they malfunction, it's in a way that will be immediately visible.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the joys of DRM. Remember kids, stealing is wrong, unless you're a multi-billion dollar company.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Dunbal]

It's the DRM.

      Is that what they call Christmas now?

      It's not DRM, it's the "we have to get this out the door before Christmas z0mg Xmas sales!!!11" mentality from the short sighted marketing department. Ship now and patch later is typical for this time of year. It probably does not bode well for the franchise, however.

      Yeah, the DRM probably broke the game, but QA HAS to have seen this problem before shipping. Obviously $50 a copy was more important than the trivial fact of the game actually working or not.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[MrHanky]

And so what? Did you think Microsoft wrote DirectX for note taking?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[mcbridematt]

The Xbox and Xbox 360 do not run Windows derivatives. They run a custom operating system which implements a portion of Win32 and DirectX API's. See Xbox developers post.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[AuMatar]

Debian doesn't have the performance constraints of a game. While ISRs need to be fast, everything else can take up gobs of CPU without really noticing it. Games don't have that luxury. Talk to actual game programmers- they do use assembly, and they do have to worry about CPU and system architecture. I have a few friends who worked as recently as the PS2, they still have examples of hand rolled assembler for the shaders.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Huh... I guess I've just been very lucky so far. I've been playing GTA4 for two days now with no stability issues. I've got Vista64 installed with 4GB RAM. That's the gaming side of my PC (I do everything else in Debian), so I try to tune it towards better game performance... things like turning off services that I'll never need for games.

Now, the port does have some issues. I've got a fairly decent machine and, especially when compared with games like Crysis or Farcry 2, this engine clearly needs some optimization. Strangely, it seems CPU limited rather than GPU limited. After I quit the game, I can see on my CPU graph that both cores have been running at ~100%. I spent some time tweaking the video settings and right now I've got it running with both decent quality and a decent framerate.

One "feature" that seems to be annoying a lot of people is the video memory "calculator" the game uses. For each setting you modify, it calculates how much video memory that will cost. Your total is your installed video memory (512MB on my card). Not everything affects it, but increasing resolution, texture size, and draw distance will. So depending on how you set these you can't necessarily have them all high. But, it doesn't seem to work very well. You can override it from the command line. I forced it to use my LCD resolution (1280x1024) with high textures and a decent draw distance. This puts me at about 730/512MB on my "budget" yet the game still runs just fine and it looks better too.

They added a "dynamic shadow" feature to the PC version which you can adjust in the graphics menu. The values range from 0 to 16, but the quality at any setting is mediocre. It's a nice idea, but poorly implemented, and the game will run a bit faster when I turn it off.

Another annoying bit already mentioned is the control scheme. Fortunately, I purchased an XBox360 controller for use on my PC because that is the only gamepad supported by GTA4 (though I didn't know that when I bought the controller). Also, you can't actually *change* any of the mappings. There is a "Controller Configuration" menu item, but when you select it you are shown a picture of the controller and a diagram of what each button does. You can press R-stick left and right but all that does is show you the mappings for on foot, in vehicle, etc.

Like previous GTA ports, the PC version will let you play your own music on one of the radio stations (Independence FM here). They've even improved it for GTA4 and one of the modes will automatically insert fake commercials and DJ banter between your music if you like. But... it doesn't support Ogg (my preferred format) or many others. I do have some MP3s, though, and could always transcode if I wanted. The game specifically says that you can put shortcuts to your music or music folders into the user music directory. But... it doesn't work with networked mounts. I keep all of my music on my server and access via Samba from Windows or NFS in Linux. But not for GTA4... it just ignores any shortcuts that access another machine. Lame!

Still, despite these issues, it's been working far better for me than it has for most people and I've certainly been enjoying it so far.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[penguinchris]

I guess you've already been refuted, but I'll point out anyway that the PS3's cell processor is Power PC as well, and the PS3 has no problem with GTA 4 and didn't require a year to port to.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[erroneus]

How is anything based on Win32 and DirectX not a Windows derivative?

I once wasted close to an hour watching a Microsoft guy give a history of "big icons in a tool bar at the bottom of the screen" before he demonstrated the Mac OS X panel on Windows 7. They can claim all day long that it isn't what it looks like. But when you see it, it looks pretty obvious as to what it is.

And I suppose WindowsCE isn't a Windows derivative either for the same reasons stated by that developer's post?

People have hacked into and examined the XBox and XBox 360 code extensively and they rather disagree with the assertions of the developer. And to make a car analogy, I would rather trust the word of a mechanic than a salesman. "Oh no! A Lexus is not a Toyota!!" Right...

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Assembly will only be used for small, high-cost operations. These pieces are small enough that if they malfunction, it's in a way that will be immediately visible.

Nonsense. Here's one counterexample. There is the assembly routine in Excel 2007 that formats numbers for display; it had a subtle bug with some input values. Bug description from Microsoft, Technical explanation (PDF).

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

wine implements win32 and directx, that doesn't make it a windows derivative.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running GTA IV on Vista 64 with 8 GB Ram with no problems. The Games for Windows software needed to be downloaded and installed before GTA would continue installing.

The mechanisms for loging in and playing GTA is intrusive and annoying though.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[balthan]

It's the DRM. Many of the crashing problems seem to be Securom crashing, which causes the game client to exit to desktop imediately.

Most of the problems are being caused by the dual online accounts required. The Rockstar Social Club servers initially couldn't handle the volume, which was causing the game to crash on startup. And people were having problems getting Games for Windows live installed right with its dependencies (such as .NET Framework 3.5). My guess is something isn't quite right with the GTA4 installer.

It also needs you to upgrade to the latest Games For Windows release, which doesn't support Vista64 at the moment. So that's all the hardcore gamers with 4GB+ of ram out of the picture.

False. I have Vista64 and 8GB of RAM and am able to run GTA4 and GfW just fine.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Jugalator]

Dude, we aren't talking about a note taking program.

No, but Windows vs Xbox 360. And game development.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Zarhan]

I do have some MP3s, though, and could always transcode if I wanted. The game specifically says that you can put shortcuts to your music or music folders into the user music directory. But... it doesn't work with networked mounts. I keep all of my music on my server and access via Samba from Windows or NFS in Linux. But not for GTA4... it just ignores any shortcuts that access another machine. Lame!

Does the old "Map network location to a drive letter" standby work? That way the shortcuts would refer to e.g. E:\Music instead of \\FILESERVER\MUSIC...?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see what the problem is...

I haven't had *any* trouble with my pirate copy

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[sunami]

Right, it makes it an emulator!

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think he does, not even nearly.

But for example look at the playstation 2, look at its specification, then look at the specification required to run a PS2 emulator.

The architecture differs greatly, there is far greater parallelism, and its a beast to sort out. Whether or not the CPUs run the same instruction set is neither here nor there, when your dealing with dedicated console hardware your software isnt necessarily going to look anything like what your writing for a desktop machine, quadcore or otherwise.

Go back to your 2-2 degree and try again.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[bobbagum]

Ithe PS3 has no problem with GTA 4 and didn't require a year to port to.

Porting from which platform exactly? GTA4 was first released on PS3 and Xbox360 simultaneously.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[thepotoo]

Actually, this DRM is special. I think it could be responsible for the bugs people are seeing. Rockstar has gone out of their way to add in extra crap: dozens of little "easter eggs" like a spinning camera, missing textures, similar stuff, to copies that don't validate. It's more than a simple one time Securom check, there's at least a dozen different hooks that check to see if the version is legit.

This might be why the scene is having such trouble cracking the damned game. FeDOR may have finally cracked it, but it's taken more PROPERs than your average release.

Note/Disclaimer: I'm not going to pirate or buy this game, I'm nowhere near the minimum system requirements, and I don't generally pirate stuff anyway. I'm just following the scene releases so I can be the first one to laugh at Rockstar's "uncrackable, no really this time" DRM.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[cbrocious]

Ugh, sad to hear. When will people learn that this nonsense only hurts them?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[cbrocious]

Where in either of these documents did it say that the routine was written in assembly? I believe you were confused by the PDF's use of a disassembler.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, Steam is a pretty popular example of DRM.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[robthebloke]

Well, nice idea in theory. The reality is however the 360 has a power PC architecture: the byte ordering in all of the assets needs to be reversed; the code that's been split to run over 6 threads has to be reduced to run on dual/quad core; The hand crafted maths routines using the altivec instruction set (with 128registers) need to be ported to SSE (with 8). And the list goes on. The original xbox was similar in architecture to a PC, but the 360 is much nearer to an old G5 PowerMac.

Trust me, there is actually very little indeed that would be identical.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever used the sdk? it's a write once run on both sorta thing. the fact the 360 uses something that looks like powerpc means nothing.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[robthebloke]

The 360 is more akin to the G5 PowerMac.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Dun Malg]

How is anything based on Win32 and DirectX not a Windows derivative?

Those are APIs. Windows is an OS. Two completely different operating systems could use the same APIs, but handle the API calls completely different behind the scenes. That's kind of the point of an API.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and MS...the company that has never started from scratch on anything has suddenly decided to build a new OS for their game system from the bottom up - implementing only similar APIS of windows.

Bullshit.

The xbox360 and original xbox run derivatives of Windows. Period. It's not a horrible thing but don't act like an idiot.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[dintech]

I'm not so sure. One of the more interesting 'success stories', if you can call it that, is the DRM in Cubase. Cubase used to be massively pirated but version SX 3.1 released in 2005 took 9 months to crack and version 4 hasn't been cracked after 2 years.

They achieved this by wiring many types and layers of protection into as many diverse areas of the code base as they could. They made the job of reverse engineering just too frustrating and time consuming. You would effectively have to QA test the entire thing for various use cases and time delays. This obviously has knock on effects in performance for your paying customers of course.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[scubamage]

Well said anon. However, doesn't the Xbox 360 run on a modified NT kernel? There should be *some* overlap, somewhere. Or have they really modified it that much? I'm not a game dev so I wouldn't even venture a guess.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[azuredrake]

Windows XP game development and xbox 360 game development are virtually identical, if you go from console to PC. If the PC is your primary platform, you have to be careful that nothing you did on the game is above the capabilities of the console.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed that nobody has brought up XNA yet. Given that "compile for xbox" and "compile for pc" are only a few clicks away from one another, you would think that the port wouldn't take an incredible amount of time, unless they for some reason had to do a content overhaul (graphics, sound, etc...).

http://www.xna.com/

XNA actually makes for pretty universal development for both xbox and pc, although I'm sure there's plenty of little optimization gotchas along the way. I have no idea if the xbox has any notion of directx for example.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[ChinggisK]

I'm more astonished that Rockstar would pull something like this. I don't play many of their games but I was under the impression that they were a fairly solid, quality game producing company.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[tvjunky]

Where in either of these documents did it say that the routine was written in assembly? I believe you were confused by the PDF's use of a disassembler.

Page 11, under the diagrams:

The code seems to be written directly in assembly, since it has no C/C++ style stack frame or register usage. Also, the usage of some rare assembly instructions also points to it being hand coded assembly. This was likely done for performance - converting floating-point values to text needs to be high performance for Excel.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[flitty]

If by stable, you mean "Because of the scope of game they made, we'll overlook the bugs, glitches, broken geometry, horrid gun controls, broken multiplayer etc. etc." The only time I cheated in GTA games was either because Friends wanted to cause mass mayhem, or I was stuck in geometry and required a Rocket Launcher to kill myself to get out.

GTA:SA was one of the more stable Rockstar games i've played, and GTAIV seemed to be a step backwards due to being next gen, some of the old GTA3 bugs came back.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Guarantee you they coulda done the port and finished the debugging/QA in time if they weren't wasting time integrating Anti-Customer Technology at the same time.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Cowmonaut]

It is not surprising your cores were running at 100%. Games tend to "use" all available CPU power regardless if they need to actually use it, at least most modern ones. I only have anecdotal evidence of this. Essentially, when I got my new PC I wanted to try to make it crash (hardware was a major step up for me and I wanted to push it). I had Doom3, Command&Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, and Half-Life 2 all running on the highest settings and was able to alt-tab between them pretty smoothly. CPU usage was at 100%. Funny thing is, if I play any one of those games on its own my CPU usage goes up to 100% supposedly as well. At least for the core its using (Doom3 and HL2 will use multi-cores, Zero Hour does not appear to).

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[aesiamun]

Wine Is Not an Emulator

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Hurricane78]

Note/Disclaimer: I'm not going to pirate or buy this game, I'm nowhere near the minimum system requirements, and I don't generally pirate stuff anyway.

I could not imagine a Slashdotter coming out of his basement, buying a corvette, conquering ships and stealing shit on the high seas anyway.

Or in other words: Please hand in your geek card right now, or we have to take your internets away. (= Sudden death)

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[AndrewNeo]

The reason this works is because XNA games are written in C#. The .NET environment then JITs the code to native on the target system (Windows, Xbox, Zune, etc.) All the hardware interaction parts are written into the platform-specific side of the .NET framework.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[AndrewNeo]

Apparently during E3 when the 360 was first coming out, companies were demoing their games on G5 towers.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Narishma]

Because it's off-topic. XNA is meant for smaller games where performance is not very important, certainly not for things like GTA.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[skroops]

I hope everyone who's having problems returns it to the store. High levels of returns make the distributer very uneasy, which in turn should send a message to the publisher.

I see this suggestion sometimes, but every time I've ever tried to return an open pc game I've been told more or less to fuck off. What's you're secret?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

As a World In Conflict owner I can assure you there is plenty SecureROM can screw you over with mid-game when it detects rogue processes its designed to not like.

I pity you, if you write code and game on the same machine.

They are also unwilling to help support their product ("but, but, if we helped you, we'd have to help everybody and some of those people might be pirates" is what their support told me after my 10th email).

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Hurricane78]

What you did not mention was, that the cracked (actually decrypted/compiled are better words for it) version ran much faster.
What they did was crazy. They decrypted the whole GUI code and only encrypted it right before use. Even the mouse was sluggish in the "original" version.
After cracking it, it ran nice and smooth.

This is easy to crack as soon as you know how to call the decryption for every piece of code needed. You have to follow the calls down, until you have a decrypted version of everything.

It's so stupid that it hurts: The CPU has to execute it in a un-encrypted form. So it has to lie in ram in that form some time in the execution. So you will always be able to get the raw machine code. But tell that to a PHB who can't tell the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents... *sigh*

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[dziban303]

You can't return an opened video game to a store. What rock have you been living under for the past, well, ever?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost all games use 100% cpu at least on one thread, they just don't yield any spare cpu cycles in their main loops (0mg 1 g0t 34234 FPS sw33t roflmaololrollercoastercputoaster -yeah right your eyes can't see the difference between 50 and 5000fps so enjoy frying your cpu).

Which i've always found quite annoying, why fry a processor when you don't need to?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[dziban303]

I'm not going to pirate or buy this game

I fucking am. Fuck these game publishers with their shitty products that don't work worth a damn--why would I pay for that abuse? These asshats are just like Ford or GM.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, the sdk has been designed for compatibility, you know? almost the same set of api, graphically and not, with the wizard converto to xbox / convert to c sharp in visual studio

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[theaveng]

>>>One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...

That would be true if we were talking about an Xbox, which was a Celeron-based PC minus the keyboard, but not so with the X360 which has dedicated CPUs (multicore) and GPUs specifically assigned for the task of gaming. Therefore porting anything from the X360 to a general-purpose computer requires a major rewrite.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Carlio]

You can in the UK at least - the Sale of Goods Act (1979) requires that goods sold are of 'satisfactory quality' and demonstrate 'fitness for purpose'; the GTA 4 release admirably fails on both counts and GAME/HMV/Currys/whatever are breaking the law if they won't give you a full refund with the same payment method you used. Law of the land > Company policy

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Mister Whirly]

I agree. Can you point me to a torrent for the new Corvette? I'd really like to have one, but don't want to pay for it.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[IndustrialComplex]

I fucking am. Fuck these game publishers with their shitty products that don't work worth a damn--why would I pay for that abuse? These asshats are just like Ford or GM.

I would normally prefer to see posts such as yours marked down as flamebait, but every now and then it is good to have one come to light so that everyone might see how your rationale is actually hurting your cause.

You contradict yourself in your own post. You feel the game is worth playing, but at the same time call it a shitty product that doesn't work worth a damn?

If you really wanted to make a point, a better approach would be to not purchase the game, and not pirate it either. By pirating it, you just give them ammunition to keep pushing DRM as evidence that it isn't yet good enough.

It will never be good enough, but you won't convince them of that by pirating it.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[larry bagina]

I take it you've never played grand theft auto.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[thepotoo]

Please. I prefer the term piracy. Calling it copyright infringement makes me feel like some loser sitting in his mothers basement trading 1s and 0s with other losers. Who wants to do that?

Piracy be nothing like yer copyright infringement, it be totally badass. ARRRRGH!

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying "Firefox runs on both Windows XP and OS X. Therefore XP and OS X are the same."
Talk about bullshit.

The new Intel Macs can run the same APIs as XP. Does being able to run the same APIs make the operating systems identical, or derivatives of each other? Hell no. Use some sense man.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[ravenshrike]

Unless you put up a stink about DRM. It worked for me with X3:Reunion at Best Buy of all places.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[FuckTheModerators]

I downloaded the torrent for the new 'vette, and unfortunately it's a rip.

It's a bunch of 3d model files connected to a hacked shapeways account. The first rip had no assembly instructions, and so far the PROPERs and REPACKs are still missing everything to the rear of the drivers seat.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

No one ever writes code from scratch anymore. It's obviously a stripped down fork of Windows 2000/XP.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Mister Whirly]

No, I am talking about the actual car made by Chevrolet, not some "skin" for some game.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[pwizard2]

GTA:SA was one of the more stable Rockstar games I've played, and GTAIV seemed to be a step backwards due to being next gen, some of the old GTA3 bugs came back.

I've had quite a few problems with GTA:SA's PC port. Back when I was using an ATI card, the textures were very glitchy (not all polys would render on the people you would see on the street) and the controls were acceptable at best or outright terrible. I never got past the "Learning to Fly" mission because the plane controls were so bad; it may be okay on a console but after 30-40 attempts at doing it with a keyboard/mouse I just gave up.

In contrast, I loved the PC ports for GTA3 and GTA:VC. The controls were decent and it was actually fun to play.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[juenger1701]

except any store with semi decently trained staff will turn away opened PC game returns, defectives just get a new copy opened at the store and the old copy is simply thrown out it never gets back to distro

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[chromeshadow]

The honourable thing to do is to boycott the product. Don't play it, don't talk about it on teh internets, don't do one thing which would encourage the publisher to work on a sequel with yet another type of DRM in it.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a blast at parties.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[eulernet]

The QA never test the DRMed version (I know I have been a long time game programmer), they work on the non-DRM version !
Protection is added at the last moment, and expected to not break the game.

Also, they have been in a hurry to ship the game, so the QA were probably told to skip testing the DRM.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Axess Denyd]

Actually I am running Vista64 Home and Games For Windows worked just fine. And really I get pretty decent framerates on the game at 1650x10something. Must be the 6gb of RAM.

My favorite part is that you have to run it from the Rockstar Social Club launcher, but if you are logged IN to the social club it crashes with an MMA10 error. Or maybe my favorite part is that you have to be connected to Games For Windows to create SINGLE PLAYER SAVEGAME. Yeah, that makes sense.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Axess Denyd]

Note:

If you bought it from Steam you can't use any command-line options, unless there is a workaround that someone has figured out.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[pegdhcp]

Please keep in mind that IANAL;
In Turkey we could not return opened media in the past. But after EU compatibility laws for consumer rights passed, you can return anything within 30 days. Although shops claim that digital media returns will not be accepted, if you go thru -very simple- legal complains procedure, they will roll over and play dead. I guess in any European country (member or not) customers should be able to return games and/or music to stores.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Beardo the Bearded]

You never played GTA3 for the PC, did you?

It had the same problems, and the only way to fix them was to get the no CD crack. It was so rampant that the only fix for Rockstar was to patch the game with a no CD crack of their own. What happens is that it's checking the CD so ridiculously often that your PC is now only as fast as your DVD drive. That's a HUGE bottleneck.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago. They haven't learned anything in the last five years.

Apparently, neither have the consumers.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

NO

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Wine has Win32 API under Linux.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[r0bVious]

The problem with "returning" the product is that you can't straight up return the product, which then dissuades people from returning it. If I bought the game from Best Buy and decided it sucked and wanted to take it back, the best they could do for me is exchange it for a new one. A new copy of the same game. Can't even do store-credit in most situations. It has to do with copyright law. I think it's national, but may be state (Pennsylvania)... though I can't see a reason why a copyright law would pertain only to state. It's a broken system.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh? really? I have the latest GFW on my Vista 64 machine. it auto updated on Fallout 3. Odd.

(Just so that as many people as possible know, if you bypass the launcher in Fallout3, you bypass Securom too (no cd needed). Maybe something similar exists with GTA4?)

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[billcopc]

It ended up biting Steinberg in the ass, because the crack was no simple EXE patch, it was a full-blown dongle emulator. By making Cubase SX3 hard to crack, they directly encouraged H2O to write a universal crack for all their dongle-infected apps.

To make things worse, the protection was so invasive, many layers of just-in-time decryption, that it significantly slowed down the app and led to all sorts of weird timing issues. As a result, a staggering number of people stayed on the previous version, which was quite similar in features.

The same nonsense is happening with Cubase 4. They've added a handful of crap features few people care about, so all those in the know are sticking with their existing version. You obviously can't go out and buy an older version in-store, so new folks wind up with C4 simply because they don't have a choice.

In this situation, one has to wonder how much money they've lost due to the DRM. It has taken a lackluster upgrade and made it worse, so a bunch of people are jumping ship to a competitor's product, such as Ableton, Sonar or the extremely popular Reaper. They all do pretty much the same things, support the same plugins (or more), and often provide more efficient interfaces (Cubase is kind of backwards for some things). How long until Cubase gets pwned by its own copy protection ?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Endymion]

Only cost them $200k to inconvenience players to such a high degree....

Is that number correct?? If so... wow. I know DRM costs money, but... wow.

Not only that, but they have to have done an analysis that says:
> 200_000 / 50.0
=> 4000.0

They think this investment of $200k will bring them an additional 4000 customers, to justify the cost? And that's just to break even, and you have to subtract off the ones you lose from bad PR? This is insanity and wishful-thinking on a level I haven't seen in some time.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[spyrochaete]

...your rationale is actually hurting your cause.

...a better approach would be to not purchase the game, and not pirate it either. By pirating it, you just give them ammunition to keep pushing DRM as evidence that it isn't yet good enough.

I disagree. I'm sure GTA4 is totally worth playing, but having to deal with SecuROM, Games for Windows Live, and Rockstar Social Club is a hell of a lot of baggage.

I argue that pirating the game states very clearly that the product has value but the terms are unacceptable. I think the last thing any gamer wants is to discourage Rockstar from making more GTA games!

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[spyrochaete]

You think that if nobody buys the product it will encourage them to make a sequel?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

who the fuck was talking about cars?

corvette doesn't mean what you think it does...

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Mister Whirly]

Cars? Nobody ever talks about cars or uses them in bad analogies on Slashdot!!
I don't think corvette means what you think it does. Actually, I was talking about the CR90 Corellian Corvette a.k.a. the Rebel Blockade Runner.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Dragoness Eclectic]

The code seems to be written directly in assembly, since it has no C/C++ style stack frame or register usage

gcc -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer .... ?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[MrHanky]

Wow. A reply that quotes a different comment from what it replies to, and plagiarises the comment its parent was a reply to. "Interesting". Yes, very.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[dougisfunny]

Or maybe, release a version without DRM.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[PitaBred]

There's a difference between emulating and cross-compiling. If you have access to only the finished binary, you have to emulate, which really kicks up the required resources. But if you have access to the source code, you can compile it to whatever architecture you want, assuming you programmed it sanely. Hence, DirectX, being the same API for multiple architectures, you should be able to take the same code and with minimal changes compile it to run well on another architecture

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

The only problem with your comparison is a lot less people give a crap about Cubase than GTA IV. It's supply and demand, even for piracy.

I've got games here that are five years old that have never been cracked, simply because they're such niche titles the crackers don't bother.

I'm sure if Cubase 4 suddenly attracted a fan base akin to GTA it'd be cracked within weeks.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

Given the games have followed the same formula for over five years now, and really offer nothing new beyond shinier graphics and the same repetitive missions... Who gives a crap? Clearly they'd rather riddle their cheap crappy port with DRM to render it unusable for most people.

Fuck Rockstar basically. GTA Vice City was the last decent game they made.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

Rockstar seem to be stuck five years ago. I mean can anyone name two things GTA IV does that are innovative or clever and didn't exist in some fashion for GTA3? I mean from what I've heard they've even REMOVED some of the more interesting stuff San Andreas had. (Like skydiving.)

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Dragoness Eclectic]

You are quite correct. I worked at a company with heavily DRM'd firmware in a certain set of computer electronics. We did all the development and testing with the non-DRM'd version, because the final step of applying DRM was heavily restricted to a handful of management for security reasons, and it also disabled all the outside interfaces that let us do important things like run tests and monitor the results.

You just hoped the DRM didn't break things, since you couldn't test with it, except for very limited blackbox testing.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[im_thatoneguy]

Hmmmm... I guess that means Linux + Wine == Windows then.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

I'm sorry... What?

You're saying "Games for Windows", the Microsoft initiative to brand PC gaming as something akin to the consoles... Doesn't work on a version of their own operating system?

That's awesome. Nice one, Microsoft! Nice to see you're so firmly committed to this you're ensuring compatibility across the board.

Thanks for that info. That shows what a farce this "Games for Windows" nonsense is.

And you're absolutely right about Securom being behind the issues. What's hilarious is Rockstar just a couple of weeks ago claimed that the protection for GTA IV was going to be LESS harsh than the one used in Spore.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Khyber]

If I have my way SecuROM will be barred 100% from the market. We'll see after I'm done nailing EA to a cross for the inclusion of it in Spore.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Pentium100]

I run BOINC, so my CPU usage is 100% 24/7. Also, I like that the game uses 100% (of at least one core) and gives me higher FPS or better graphics than using 50%.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

Is it just me? Or do you seem to be intrigued that when running three games, your CPU usage didn't go OVER 100%?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

Yes, you can. You can create desktop shortcuts and use commandline stuff there, unless GTA IV is somehow different than every other game I've ever bought on Steam.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

The sad thing is the stores obviously KNOW this, but choose to break the law and refuse until you threaten them.

Not to mention the way we're screwed. "I can't run this game due to the copy protection." "Well you can't return it because you may have copied it."

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[spyrochaete]

I've loved every GTA since the very first one, and I love that Rockstar has done such a fantastic job of providing PC versions of every single game (until this one, of course). I've been an avid gamer for over 20 years and, never having tried GTA4 yet, San Andreas is in my top 5 games of all time.

I'm pretty heartbroken to hear of all these issues and I'll be waiting for a patch before I buy GTA4. I have faith in Rockstar, though. Their gameplay, writing, level design, and missions are enormous strides ahead of the dozens of pretenders who imitate but never duplicate such a great gaming experience.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Goldberg's Pants]

Actually, I do know a way, and I should share this and get the word out.

You go to the store. Tell them it's defective and you want to exchange it. The majority of the time, you'll just be handed a new shrink wrapped version. Then you wait until a shift change, take the wrapped version back and ask for your money back.

Doesn't work all the time, but folk I know who've tried it have been successful a lot of the time.

When I bought GTA 3 and it didn't work, I had been careful opening the box. At the top it had one of those "if this is broken you can't return this item", so I used a small knife on the OTHER end of the box and opened it, where it was just plain tape.

When the game didn't work properly and Rockstar replied to my support emails telling me in so many words they lied about the requirements, I repackaged the box, and cut a small piece of tape the same size as the original and retaped the box. Store took the game back no questions when they saw the "if this is broken..." label was intact.

It's become harder these days with the change in packaging sadly, but I always enjoyed my brief little beating of the system.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[paeanblack]

A registry tweak will fix this:

First, move anything out of the "My Music" folder on the local machine. If you don't have one, just create an empty folder under "My Documents" and name it "My Music"

Open regedit and browse to:
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal

Edit the key named "My Music"

Change the value to "\\yourservername\pathtoyourmusic"

If this key doesn't exist, then create it.

Log out, log back in.

Add a shortcut to your "My Music" folder in the GTA music folder.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[travbrad]

Not only that, but I'm sure there were a lot less people trying to crack Cubase than a high-profile game release such as GTAIV, especially since R* has been making a big deal out of how "uncrackable" their DRM is. Videogames are a lot more popular than music production programs, and GTA is one of the most popular games there is. FYI, a quick look at thepiratebay and I see the Cubase3 release has 300 peers, while GTAIV has 70,000.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[protektor]

I think someone forgot that the Xbox 360 version of GTA4 was done first, but due to a contract issue with Sony. They couldn't release the Xbox 360 version ahead of the PS3 version which is why it was delayed.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Hurricane78]

Damn. I meant:

They (Steinberg) encrypted the whole GUI code and only decrypted it right before use.

Sorry for the confusion.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[B47h0ry'5 CuR53]

I'd be surprised if Excel was compiled using gcc :)

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Khyber]

I can return my software here in the USA. If I have my receipt, and it's within 30 days of purchase, if they refuse, I tell them I'm going to do a chargeback on my credit card, force the refund, and cost them extra money in the chargeback with a citation of failure to deliver promised goods of a promised quality.

The stores always capitulate when you talk and know what you're talking about

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[travbrad]

All I can really say is...WHOOSH

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[billcopc]

I pity you, if you write code and game on the same machine.

That's a feature! It's to ensure no developers ever play-test the game before release.

If they did, nobody would release any games anymore, because they would realize what filth they're unleashing upon the world.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Hurricane78]

The best experience ever, relating R*, was when a friend bought GTA San Andreas.

It did not run. And there was no patch. Even days after the release.
I took a quick look on gamecopyworld, and there were already patches avaliable for at least five different bugs!
The crackers fixed the bugs for R*, before they even could react

There were four points where the game could die. Before the intro, after the into, in the menu and while loading the city.
The fifth bug was that polygon points could be randomized all over the place for nVidia graphics cards. It looked horrible.

After that, he never bought something from R* again. I just pulled it straight from a Torrent tracker.

Unfortunately, R* does not seem to learn from this. I bet they will still make others responsible when they don't exist anymore.
And I hope I can buy the game designers and developers out for my company by then, for they are truly rock stars. :D

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Erikderzweite]

The term "piracy" for unathorized copies was in use in book industry since at least 17th century. I recall German writer Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen writing bad thing about pirates that copy his books.
BTW, same Grimmelshausen was adding some new stories to each edition of "Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus" to make legit copies more attractive as their pirated counterparts.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[operagost]

MS claims the Xbox 360 OS was built from the ground-up. Your post is the first I ever heard of claiming that it's an NT PPC kernel. Assuming a version of Win2K was used in the Xbox, downgrading to NT 4 in the 360 merely to reuse PPC code would be ridiculous. Building an advanced console around an ancient kernel would certainly be harder than porting the existing Xbox OS, and probably harder than building one from scratch. The NT kernel couldn't even take advantage of the Xbox 360's multicore CPU, making it useless. It would be a lazy exercise in futility that would end in failure.
I'm not even a real programmer, and I understand this.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Changa_MC]

I think he was intrigued that he could run 3 games at apparently 33% each, or one game at 100%, and not notice a difference in gameplay. Which may or may not be quite accurate,since he was only really playing one at a time, not matter how quickly he tabbed between them.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[shutdown -p now]

Visual C++ also has the analogous option, and, IIRC, it's enabled when compiling in "optimized for speed" mode. Usage of "exotic" assembly instructions can be easily explained by the same thing - all modern C++ compilers can actually generate quite obscure output with all optimizations enabled.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing hardware with software.

The hardware is PowerPC. The OS & APIs are Win32. Guess which one matters more when porting HLL software?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Hurricane78]

Hey, I make programming look badass and cool!
Do you want to know how?

By being the coolest most attractive guy on the party, and openly stating what I do for a living, and how cool the things are that I do.

Now for the first thing: I don't look that great. I'm overweighted by 30 kg. And I am a half-foreigner.
But I noticed that it does not matter much. As long as you have the most fun, look interesting, and have a "strong reality", you have so much value, that they are getting dragged to you like flies to a lightbulb.

The second thing is simple: Just be confident (the "strong reality" part), no matter what you do or like.
I was ashamed people would not like me because in the summertime, I run around barefoot more than other people.
You know what? I got friends and "you're cool" statements because of it, and the confidence that comes with it. :D

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[shutdown -p now]

How is anything based on Win32 and DirectX not a Windows derivative?

Is WINE a Windows derivative?

And I suppose WindowsCE isn't a Windows derivative either for the same reasons stated by that developer's post?

Windows CE is actually widely known as not being a Windows (9x/NT) derivative. Its codebase is entirely separate and written from scratch, and the kernel works very differently from any desktop Windows. Its only similarity is that it provides (a subset of) Win32 API, so it is possible to make some simple Win32 applications cross-compile for NT and CE.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Hurricane78]

Is ja interessant. Das wusste ich nicht. (Krass, ich kann grad voll schwer auf die deusche Satzstrukturierung und deutsche Ausdrücke umschalten.)

Gibt es da was zum nachlesen? Z.B. warum er gerade diesen Begriff benutzte?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Chris Burke]

You contradict yourself in your own post. You feel the game is worth playing, but at the same time call it a shitty product that doesn't work worth a damn?

It's not a contradiction at all. The game is worth playing, but then they slap DRM on top of it, resulting in a shitty product. The pirated version is actually the superior product.

If you really wanted to make a point, a better approach would be to not purchase the game, and not pirate it either. By pirating it, you just give them ammunition to keep pushing DRM as evidence that it isn't yet good enough.

What difference would it make? Like they're going to know. it's not like nobody is going to pirate it, so as long as it exists in pirated form, they will make whatever idiotic assumptions about piracy rates that they make today.

It will never be good enough, but you won't convince them of that by pirating it.

Nor will you by not pirating it. Nor will you by buying it.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true.

First, the GUI was not encrypted. Only certain sections of the code like loading/saving, adding new tracks, etc were encrypted. The decryption was actually performed on the WIBU key dongle. So, you could start Cubase without a dongle and see the GUI fine, though it would give loads of 'dongle missing' warnings and crash soon afterwards.

Second, SX 3.1 with a legal dongle did not have a sluggish mouse pointer or anything like that. Even on my modest 1.2GHz AthlonXP. I don't know where you got that from. Some operations like adding new tracks were slightly faster in the cracked version.

Third, there are a lot of nasty traps that were set off it you tried to run a debugger at the same time. Namely, seeing that unencrypted memory was a pain in the ass, and only small fragments were in memory unencrypted at any time. You could not just follow the calls. Remember the decryption was done in the dongle!

Fourth, the only successful cracks left the memory encrypted and emulated the dongle! The only reason they could do this was because of a flaw in Steinbergs WIBU key implementation. Fixing that flaw has made Cubase4 very hard to crack.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[raz0]

You probably should have used the very extensive configuration with regards to key mapping that San Andreas allows. I agree, the standard controls are very weird and counter-intuitive, but it's nothing 5 minutes spent on choosing your own (saner) mapping won't fix.

The plane missions are notoriously hard though. It's not just the controls. It takes quite a lot to get used to controlling the planes in San Andreas. In short, you just need practice. P.S. Don't use the mouse. Planes are most easily controlled with the keyboard (optionally a real controller).

http://mtasa.littlewhitey.com/

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

The stores always tell people to contact the manufacturer if they really want to return the game. I'd imagine enough people complaining on the web combined with the hardcore ones who've contacted Rockstar directly should get someone to take notice.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy the game, and download a scene release, not breaking any law's there.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[zippthorne]

"It's so stupid that it hurts: The CPU has to execute it in a un-encrypted form"

Shut uuuup. They're just going to push for CPUs with an inline crypto unit so the instruction will only be decrypted *right* before they're executed.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Correct. If you create a shortcut to the LaunchGTAIV.exe file in the game directory, you can add the command line options to it. This is what I have done. After you run the game, the settings should be saved and you can go back to running it from Steam, which is what I'm doing now.

The command line options I'm using are:

-nomemrestrict -norestrictions -norestriction -texturequality 2 -renderquality 4 -shadowdensity 0 -viewdistance 30 -detailquality 30 /high

There was some debate over whether or not the 's' was needed at the end of norestriction so I put both. This config seems to work well and it gets me the "high" texture size (putting me "over budget" in the in-game graphics settings.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[csartanis]

He admits in that post that the kernel is the same. Xbox and 360 both run modified windows kernels with more modified windows userland code. The Xbox and 360 do indeed run windows derivatives.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Oh, I forgot to try that, and I even have my remote home directory mounted as Z:. Just a moment...

Sigh... no, it does not work. I tried a shortcut to Z:\music\album as well as shortcuts to individual files within that remote directory and neither worked. Seems like they must be local files. That's pretty bad...

I still need to try that registry hack mentioned below to relocate the "My Music" folder. Maybe that will work?

Also, disregard what I said in another reply about running the game from Steam. That only worked once. I created the shortcut to run the game directly and use the right command line options. That works. Running the game later from Steam once the new graphics settings have been "saved" doesn't. I have to keep running from the new shortcut if I want to keep the settings. Not really an inconvenience, but important to know.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Champion3]

Last time I checked, WINE was not a Windows derivative.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[batkiwi]

EBGames in Australia has a 7 day return policy for any game, opened or not. This is an "I don't like it" return policy too, it does not have to be "unfit for purpose" (which has a longer warranty).

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[drsquare]

One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...I'm just not sure where all the extra bugs would arise. The actual game logic and assets should be identical.

It's just a half-arsed port. It didn't take them a year because it was a year's worth of work, it took them that long because they didn't give a shit. And why should they? PC gamers only want to play World of Warcraft anyway.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[GigaplexNZ]

That's what they said about Windows Mobile/CE. I can tell you right now that it isn't as simple as just recompiling under a different platform, a lot of the supposed same functions take different parameters or (worse) take the same parameters and return different types that the compiler doesn't warn about (int versus BOOL, where 0 means success as an int or fail as a BOOL - not to be confused with the built-in bool type).

Then there is the issue of input devices. The keyboard/mouse behaves differently to a console controller, you definitely need to do different things there.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[drinkypoo]

Sources inside Microsoft said again and again that both Xboxes in fact did run ports of Windows. You can find numerous supporting sources (who outside Microsoft would know better than people writing an Xbox emulator?) for this claim. Sorry, but I simply do not believe your reference.

It is even less likely that Microsoft wrote the operating system for the 360 from scratch. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, odds are it evolved from a duck - though it is not certain, it is the way to bet. Windows 2000 ran on the PowerPC until SP3 and was designed for portability - at least, it was redesigned for portability when they ported from the N-Ten to the x86. This is why they were able to port it to both DEC Alpha and IBM PowerPC in such a relatively short time. The Alpha port was the more commercially successful of the two since the Alpha was the more capable processor, and you could pay just as much for a PPC machine that would run NT with zero benefit, but the PPC port was probably the more capable of the two in another way - since it ran on standards-based PowerPC systems, it would run on a broader range of hardware including systems from IBM and Motorola.

PowerPC support alone is not sufficient reason for my prejudice, however; that lies in Windows NT's multiprocessor support. Anyone who has followed operating system history to any significant degree knows that multiprocessing has always been one of the most complex features to support. SMP has certainly been one of the most contentious issues in *BSD-land for just this reason. The idea that Microsoft just tossed off a new operating system with multiprocessor support which provides the Win32 APIs and is stable enough for a games console is not an impossible one, but it does seem highly unlikely to be true given Microsoft's track record, which is poor to say the least.

In summary, though Windows NT tends to have a lower penalty for thread creation than Unix and thus has some inherent advantages when it comes to multiprocessing and therefore even indicates that some people who work for or who have worked for Microsoft have some idea of what they are doing, I would not expect Microsoft to be capable of writing any operating system capable of providing a sizable portion of the Win32 (even though it is much less capable than Windows 2000, either operating system is a significant piece of software) from scratch at this point. If they were capable of doing this, they would certainly already have done so in order to replace Windows NT, which is long past the "showing its age" phase. Vista in particular is a mishmash of just about every computing model Microsoft has ever used. By far, the most logical explanation is that the Xbox operating system is based on Windows 2000, and so is the Xbox 360 operating system, but Microsoft's gaming business model is dependent on convincing people that they are not being sold a PC, and so they must deny any similarity unto their graves.

Put another way, YHBT by Microsoft.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[drinkypoo]

Therefore porting anything from the X360 to a general-purpose computer requires a major rewrite.

Here's what's wrong with your analysis:

• The Grand Theft Auto engine is already built at least partially from a single codebase, which in former incarnations has already been reworked to run on (for example) Playstation 2, Xbox, and Windows XP. This demonstrates a certain amount of portability.
• The PowerPC cores in the Xbox 360 run at a very high speed but they are not necessarily exceptionally powerful.
• The Xbox operating system, whether it is based on Windows or not, behaves in much the same way. The way you would make use of multiple processors on a Windows system is to spawn multiple threads. Guess what happens if you spawn multiple threads on a PC with one processor? Yep, they all run on that processor. Thus, significant tuning would need to be done, but not necessarily much else.
• The game already runs on the Playstation 3, which is dramatically more different from the Xbox 360 than a PC is. In order to do any heavy lifting on the PS3 you have to break processes up into vectors which can be dumped to the seven active SPEs in the Cell, each of which has a very small amount of dedicated memory. If you can make the same engine run on the 360 and the PS3, then you had better be able to get it to run under Windows - especially since both Windows and the 360 use DirectX ("Xbox" is short for "DirectX-box".)

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are using bittorrent you probably are breaking the law by uploading parts of the game to other people. It doesn't matter for the law that you think you are behaving reasonably.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

As a modern geek, you should realise that CPU architecture doesn't matter a lot when coding in modern languages.

If you are claiming that C++ is not a modern language, then you are correct.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[GigaplexNZ]

That's some rather screwed up maths there. They don't make $50 for every box sold. Some of that money goes to the retailer. Some of that money goes into packaging and shipping costs. I would hazard a guess that the people who invested the $200k would only see about $20 of the purchase cost (completely unfounded guess). That would bring the number of additional break even customers to 10,000.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Endymion]

I know that. 4k sales is a minimum figure.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Com2Kid]

And I suppose WindowsCE isn't a Windows derivative either for the same reasons stated by that developer's post?

WinCE is not a Windows derivative. It is a completely separate OS kernel that happens to have had a good deal of the Desktop's CRT and other APIs ported over to it some years back.

Is it possible to have very carefully written code cross compile on WinCE and the desktop? Sure. But the same can be said for Windows XP and Linux. Stick to API libraries that exist on both platforms, and make liberal use of IFDEFs to cover any platform differences. E.g. WinCE Windows, your screen size is almost an order of magnitude different, so you'll probably want to redesign the entire UI. Your input options are significantly different, need to take that into account. Your audio output options are different. How your app handles networking is (should be) different.

Heck, the directory where you save user data at is different. The file system is laid out differently (in places).

For both XBox 360 and WinCE Microsoft has taken steps to try and make writing cross platform code as easy as possible, but it is by no means consists of a single "hit recompile" step.

And as apparently demonstrated by Rockstar, companies can screw up cross platform releases really bad.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Uberbah]

It has to do with copyright law. I think it's national, but may be state (Pennsylvania)... though I can't see a reason why a copyright law would pertain only to state. It's a broken system.

And when the clerk tells you that, either they are lying or they are passing down the lie that was taught to them in training. There is nothing whatsoever about copyright law that prevents the store from taking returns on opened items.

This is why you always want to buy software with a credit card, so you can do a charge back if necessary.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Uberbah]

Just skip the hassle and buy software/games with a credit card. If the store gives you any shit, tell them you'll do a chargeback.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Uberbah]

Visa/Mastercard doesn't give a shit about a store's return policy. Buy with a credit card, and tell them you'll do a chargeback if they don't refund your money. You'll get your money back and the store will have to eat an additional chargeback fee.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logic sucks and your analogy is bullshit. You're trying to compare an application to operating systems. Fail.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Quarters]

The first XBox 360 development kits seeded to ISVs were dual processor PowerPC G5 towers with ATI video cards.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Planesdragon]

One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...

You think that a multi-core homogenous PowerPC system would port seamlessly to a single-core chaotically heterogenous x86 OS?

Why, exactly?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[ZosX]

I know its off topic, but I was just curious, but doesn't omitting the frame pointer break some code, or is that completely unnecessary? I thought C/C++ needed the frame pointers as a point of reference to the stack? I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to C.....

Secondly I've compiled things in Gentoo without the frame-pointer (no problems), but I question how much of an improvement over just a level 3 optimization that gives you. On older (Pentium-166) hardware it didn't really seem to improve responsiveness any at all.

I've been thinking about rolling gentoo again, but Ubuntu really has it pretty down. I know with apt you can download source files, but to have them automatically compile and install (ala portage, bsd ports, etc) it would be pretty awesome.

Or maybe apt can auto-compile...need to look into this further.....

Don't think I can drift anymore off topic here, so I'll just quit.... :)

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[LackThereof]

If you bought it from Steam you can't use any command-line options, unless there is a workaround that someone has figured out.

A highly technical workaround:
Right click on the game in Steam. Choose the "properties" menu item. A multi-tab window will appear; the default tab is "General".
In this tab, click on the "Set Launch Options..." button. Type your options in the provided box.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Lost Engineer]

Mostly lack of a frame pointer makes debugging harder, but if you allocate at run time on the stack you need a frame pointer to access your locals, as their offset is not known at compile time.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[ZosX]

That's right. I knew that too! :P

I totally forgot about the frame references for debugging.

Thank you for totally clearing that up.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Seraphim_72]

It's the DRM.

Is that what they call Christmas now?

to the tune of O Holy Night


O' DRM, my CD drive light is shining,
It is the night of a new SecROM birth.
Long lay the world in copy and torrent pinning,
'Til it appeared and Sony felt it's worth.
A thrill of hope and the corporate world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new install born.
Fall on your knees! O, hear the Millennium Act!
O' D RM, O' DRM when media is born;
O' D RM, O' D RM, O DRM Divine.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Normally, yes. However, in this case, because Steam launches the GTA "Social Club" launcher which in turn runs a command window which in turn actually runs GTA4, the options get lost somewhere along the way...

Maybe it will get fixed with a GTA or Steam patch, but right now the only way to pass options in is to create your own shortcut to LaunchGTAIV.exe and add them to that and then run it *after* you have already started the Rockstar Social Club app. It has a big play button, but just minimize it and use your shortcut instead.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[toddestan]

WinCE is not a Windows derivative. It is a completely separate OS kernel that happens to have had a good deal of the Desktop's CRT and other APIs ported over to it some years back.

Of course WinCE is not a Windows derivative. It *is* Windows. What do you think the "Win" stands for?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

The "franchise" is based on sales of the console ports, which worked fine. The PC ports are basically just a courtesy.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[theaveng]

Hmmm. I figured the PS3 and X360 versions were similar but written by different teams of programmers, each team tasked to target each console's unique hardware.

So,

if porting is such an easy task, what is Your explanation for why the PC version was so buggy, when the PS3/X360 versions ran flawlessly?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

> I have a few friends who worked as recently as the PS2, they still have examples of hand rolled assembler for the shaders.

The PS2 didn't have shaders.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[sjames]

One problem with DRM is that it's 'attitude' is exactly the opposite of what is desirable in software. That is, to DRM, the only 'correct' thing to do if the least little thing looks out of place is to die a horrible death right now. For almost anything else, it's best to try to get by if possible in the production version.

DRM intrinsically makes software brittle.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently run Vista Home Premium x64 with 4GB of ram, adn have only had an error once.... I can play it just fine.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[AuMatar]

THought it was. It was some other secondary processor then.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the crashing problems seem to be Securom crashing

Oh, how surprising ... not.

Someone should charge those bastards with criminal conduct based on the vast damage they've made to computers, optical drives and the general sanity of honest customers over the years. (Remember: The pirates don't even see SecuROM. It's already gone when they get their copy. Insane.)

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Bryansix]

Unfortunately GameStop and retailers like it will not accept opened games as returns. This is a complete bullshit policy since if I wanted to Pirate the game I wouldn't start by buying it only to return it later. I would just download it. Whatever their fucking magical logic that leads to such a policy is I responded by saying goodbye to PC gaming forever. I now play exclusively on XBox 360.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the QA test with or without the Securom version they shipped?
Most likely they tested without any protection, or with an earlier version. I'd say the DRM broke it.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[yahwotqa]

Indeed, and once you get hang of it, you can fly with great precision. The only exception for me was helicopter control, which I liked better in Vice City.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Anonymous Coward]

An easy port have been the case with the original xbox, as it was just a pentium 3 computer running a windows varient, but the new xbox 360 uses a power pc chip (used in macintoshes from the mid 90s until 2006) with an os that is based off of an early version of windows nt that supported power pc prcessors. I imagine the differences in modern pc architecture and the modern xbox actually make porting a game quite difficult if it is not written on a common platform that runs on all systems, which I assume because of it's nature, gta 4 is not

Microsoft wanted easy portability between the two platforms, so he created a special system just for it. Porting between XBox360, and PC is easy..(See XNA..)

I'm a programmer, so I know, they just fucked up, bad..

From what I can see, they never fixed the CPU code, so the game still depends on the XBox360's tri-core cpu, so basically they just directly ported it, and didn't fix the cpu threading. (Hence the high CPU requirements(Quad Core)..)

This game in no way should require that much PC power, its a bad port job. I run Oblivion at 1600x1200, 4xAF, 4xAA, HDR, all settings maxed out, using Quarls High Res Texture Pack v3, plus his better LOD's(4096x4096), and the better LOD normal maps(2048x2048), the game looks awesome, and runs at 30-60fps outdoors.. (Same with Fallout 3, Max settings 1600x1200, Crysis, high settings, with the DX10 tweaks.. 30-60fps)

Yet, I can't run GTA IV, at maximum low :)... I get like 15fps,... Running it as low as it can go, using command line options to run it even lower than normally possible.. Whatever.. POS..

And I don't buy this bullshit about Havok+Euphoria using up all the power, liars, The Force Unleashed used both of those as well, and Digital Molecular Matter, and it ran on the fucking PS2.. The PS2 can handle Havok+Euphoria+DMM, but not my top end PC? If they scaled it to work on PS2, there is no reason this shouldn't run fine on most PC's..

And its certainly not graphics causing the problem, this is the fucking ugliest next gen PC game ever, ever.. Seriously, check out Mafia for PC, its about 10 years old, and looks better than GTAIV, no joke..

Here look.. Mafia PC..
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/mafia/screenshots.html?id=15482

Thats not even how the game looks maxed out, those are old pics, the game looks much better on modern hardware.. It puts GTA IV to shame, hell Driver 3 does too..

annoyed

[Anonymous Coward]

i played just over an hours worth when i got home from the store it crashed twice. the second time it crashed it went straight to the desktop and could not use my mouse any more

"Please do not turn off the system"

[Tojo-Mojo]

The port is very faithful to the console versions. My favorite part is the "Please do not turn off the system" message when saving. I was just about to hit that big 'ol power button, too!

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[PhilHibbs]

This has become a running joke in my friends' house. When someone's playing a console game and that message comes up, they will usually interrupt everyone else doing whatever they are doing (playing cards, playing on a PC game, making a cup of tea) and say "Hey, don't turn off the console!"

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[elrous0]

Just once I'm going to turn it off during one of these messages just to see what happens. If I don't make it out alive, tell my wife I love her.

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[lupinstel]

My brother died that way you insensitive clod.

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[Axess Denyd]

It would be awesome if a ghost came out.

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[Anonymous Coward]

In some games (I recall some of the old Pokémon games for the Gameboy Color), turning off the game system at the right moment can induce positive glitches (in this case, item/Pokémon duplication).

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll fit it in to the conversation somehow on our first date.

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[fm6]

You'll be fine, as long as you've been backed up!

Seriously, though, this silly message is nothing to joke about. If they didn't bother to review the user dialogs when porting to the PC, you have to wonder what else they missed.

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[Goldberg's Pants]

There will be a knock at the door. You'll open it. Two burly men with bats will say "We TOLD you not to turn it OFF!" and the next thing you'll remember will be waking up in hospital, finding out three years have passed, and your wife is now married to your nemesis from High School.

Or your save will be corrupt. One of the two.

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a wife?

Wow - what are you doing on Slashdot?

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[neuro88]

Just once I'm going to turn it off during one of these messages just to see what happens. If I don't make it out alive, tell my wife I love her.

I'm going to try it too. If I don't make it out alive, tell my wife I said hello.

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can get a job in QA and get paid to power off during that message (depending on the system, it's ok for it to destroy your save file, but the game/system has to be able to handle the resulting corrupted file properly, usually through simple deletion).

Oh the hours I spent trying to find *just* the right time to remove a memory unit....

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[Anzya]

One of my cats actually managed to do it while my wife played DDR. Guess they didn't like the music... :)

Anyway, it resulted in one wiped memory card...
Oh, and if you don't make it out alive? Can I have your console? :)

could be

[Anonymous Coward]

that it was outsourced ...

Ha-ha!

[Dunbal]

Makes you wish you could have tried it first before buying it, huh? Oh wait, thanks to "copyright infringement" laws making YOU the criminal and DRM, you can't.

      Enjoy being ripped off your $49.99. I guess eventually they'll get a patch out. But remember to support the industry! They obviously want your money more than you do.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

someones mom was raped by capitalist software engineers.

laws dont keep you from doing something, it merely adds a penalty if you get caught.

the description says they are handing out refunds.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

People are getting their refund requests denied now. Presumably Valve were being nice to the first few, but shut the door when a lot of people started asking.

Re:Ha-ha!

[mrchaotica]

I don't think the game has been out long enough for the credit card chargeback period to have expired, has it?

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently. The joys of someone else controlling access to games you've bought I guess.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost every steam game, you can find and write down your product keys. It would be a hassle, but you could always "add a new steam product" or just download and reinstall without steam if they did such a thing.

I pulled my COD4 Key out of my registry after getting it from steam. Just in case.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all part of the "value added" by Steam's DRM ... for the vendor.

Sigh.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Ash-Fox]

Almost every steam game, you can find and write down your product keys.

I bought all these games on Steam, some of them don't even have product keys, like X3: Reunion, X2: The threat, original Unreal Tournament, Unreal, Unreal II etc.

What do I do in those cases?

I pulled my COD4 Key out of my registry after getting it from steam.

You cannot register CoD4 keys with another Steam account.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

Good luck re-using a serial for a different Steam account.

Sure, you could hunt around and find a physical copy and pray that serial isn't Steam-specific and actually works. But I guarantee you that even if it should work for COD4, the same will not be true for every title you have in Steam. If Valve cuts you off, you *will* be screwed.

If you think otherwise you don't grasp the DRM in Steam very well.

Re:Ha-ha!

[nvrrobx]

That's what calling your credit card company is for. They sold you something defective and are refusing to refund your money for defective purchase.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Joe U]

If you think otherwise you don't grasp the DRM in Steam very well.

I think I just did. The solution is to create a new steam account for every game. If you have to chargeback one, you'll still have the others.

Re:Ha-ha!

[wild_quinine]

If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently. The joys of someone else controlling access to games you've bought I guess.

Can you give any evidence of this at all? A forum post, a moderater comment, some vaguely worded threat in their FAQs? anything?

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

That would rather effectively undermine the whole convenience aspect that's the big selling point for accepting Steam's DRM in the first place though.

50+ games on 50+ separate logins? Sure, you could use the same password for all of them, but it'd still be an unbelievable hassle.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

Note that I did say "apparently". That was meant to imply "someone said", not "I know for a fact". I saw it mentioned in a forum post relating to Left 4 Dead I believe.

I couldn't find the original forum post I read it in, but found this moderator comment related to GTA:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8603413&postcount=22

Re:Ha-ha!

[wild_quinine]

That's exactly what I wanted to see. This is a representative of the company (but likely not an employee) confirming accounts being disabled as a result of chargebacks.

That kind of behavior is simply reprehensible. I do agree that chargebacks should not be made flippantly, but if Valve have refused a refund on a dodgy product, that's getting a bit closer to the kind of reason I would use them.

Disabling accounts on the basis of chargebacks is like IKEA taking all of your furniture because you charged back on a broken wardrobe.

Re:Ha-ha!

[wild_quinine]

This page contains the plain facts of Steam's 'Zero Tolerance' Policy.

Yes. They have the balls to call the rightful, legal recovery of your money 'payment fraud'.

Re:Ha-ha!

[jtownatpunk.net]

Hell, you don't even need to do anything. And it's not just limited to the stuff you buy online. A year and a half ago, I bought some Counterstrike compilation package for cheap because my new roommate was into it. I had to install the valve/steam client to run the game. Weak. I bought the physical media. W[hy]TF should I have to sign onto their system every time I want to launch the game? Whatever. So I played a couple hours of single-player than left it sit for a while. Came back to play again. Couldn't log into my account. Couldn't reset the password. Couldn't do a damn thing. Checked some forums and found that there's some absurdly complex process I can go through to "recover" my key and re-activate on a new account. Screw that. It wasn't worth my time to fix a $10 game.

Now I'm all pissed off again. I should make them straighten that out. But I'll be damned if I'm going to buy another game that relies on some company maintaining a web presence (and not screwing up my account!) just to use its most basic single-player features.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently. The joys of someone else controlling access to games you've bought I guess.

It only takes a few reports of that and Visa will beat the ever-living-you-know-what out of them. Merchants cannot retaliate against customers who exercise their chargeback rights, it's in the merchant account contracts. To give you an idea how devastating this, MS and IBM wouldn't piss off Visa, not a chance at all.

The most Valve can do is refuse to let you purchase from them again.

Re:Ha-ha!

[infoslack]

I purchased and returned mine to Best Buy. They insisted that I couldn't return it but it seems when you get loud they give the money back. This was THE WORST game I've seen in a really long time and it was rather offensive to me that a company I had so much faith in (Rockstar) would sell me such a pile of dung.

Re:Ha-ha!

[shutdown -p now]

I bought all these games on Steam, some of them don't even have product keys, like X3: Reunion, X2: The threat, original Unreal Tournament, Unreal, Unreal II etc. What do I do in those cases?

Dunno about X2 & X3, but as for the Unreal games - you don't need to do anything at all. They don't require CD key to run.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Joe U]

Agreed, but so what? Get a copy of KeePass and put it all in there.

It's a small extra step if you want to bypass to the DRM lock-in.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

It's a matter of preference I guess. It's not small to me.

You have to manually type that password. The password field in Steam does not accept pasting. I found that out when I tried to use KeePass to fill it in for me in the past. I contacted support about it and it's as designed.

To be honest, I'd rather not play any Steam games at all if I had to jump through hoops like that, keeping track of dozens of login names. Just wouldn't be worth it.

But, yes, it should sort the danger of losing access to all games in one fell swoop. So for those that think it sounds like no chore at all, go for it :)

Re:Ha-ha!

[Uberbah]

This is just as bad:

#
Buying, Selling, or Trading Accounts

Accounts which have been bought, sold or traded will be permanently disabled. This includes any other accounts in your possession at the time of the sale or trade, regardless of whether those accounts were also sold or not.
#

Takes care of any guilt I had over downloading the new Half-Life Episodes. Fuckers.

Re:Ha-ha!

[mrchaotica]

If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently.

I think both Visa and the court system would take a dim view if Valve tried to pull a stunt like that.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

They do it. It's confirmed several places in forums, including from moderators. Charge back = disabled SteamID.

I'm not about to move to the US and spend thousands of dollars to test the hypothesis that the courts would disapprove.

Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Yahya Ibn Tuma]

Rockstar has had a serious contempt for PC gaming since 2005 or so. On the other hand, It just might be run-of-the-mill incompetence of programmers who can't program.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

Do you know what I tell people? "Don't play commercial big publisher/big dev house games on PC's, it's a sucker's game. You're better off going console. If you want to play some obscure indie game or some old Flight sim of the type the Clancy-istas or Dale Brown-ites go gaga over, or Nethack, fine. But don't play off the shelf games on PC's."

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[ciderVisor]

You're better off going console.

That's good advice. I discovered this for myself a few years ago when I bought 'The Incredibles' on PC for my daughter. Just could not get it to work. Bit the bullet and bought a PS2 and managed to persuade the shop to trade versions of 'The Incredibles' (they're always reluctant to take PC games back). Every PS2 game subsequently bought 'just works' with no fuss at all. Also, there's a healthy pre-owned/trade-in market with consoles that you don't have with PC games.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[anomnomnomymous]

And you tell this because?
There are numerous (high profile) games I've been buying the past years which didn't give me any problems, and even added the advantage over consoles of being able to tinker with it (for example, mods).

The past few GTA releases on the PC were also nearly flawless, so don't know where your advice comes from. I guess you conveniently forget about the PC-games that have no problems whatsoever.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know how the folks who took your advice and bought Fallout 3 for a console instead of PC feel when they don't have access to DLC.

The fact of the matter is you can get screwed either way. The only real advice you can give is for people to "wait and see". Some people aren't patient enough for that, so they're going to be taking a chance, one way or the other. Best that they not blame you, right?

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

And you tell this because?

Fewer hassles, less expensive over the long run, lots games in genre's other than FPS, RTS or MMORPG, and although consoles do have DRM it's transparent to the user. Although mods have their appeal, they also reduce the # of games people buy, thus reducing developer income, we've all read of folks who have been playing CounterStrike+Mods to the exclusion of all else (and not buying games) for the past 8 years or so. There's no incentive to make new games if devs know some broke eastern european geek with a lot of time on his hands who pirated the game in the first place is going to be doing mods and give them away so that everybody is going to be playing the same game for 5 years or more.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

As far as I know Fallout 3 DLC has been announced for the Xbox version as well as PC. I figure the PS3 will get the major DLC eventually, perhaps as a GOTY edition disk, that's what happened with Oblivion.

And yes, it's possible to get screwed either way, but in the case of the console game you're not going to get screwed with a game that wont even run at all.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[lukrop]

But don't play off the shelf games on PC's."

Honestly, shooters are just crap on consoles. So, I don't understand why games like Call of Duty 3 (CoD1/2 where both best-sellers on the PC) are released _only_ for the PS2..

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[antanca]

Rockstar Games: Professional Trolls

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

Money! They're going to sell a lot more copies, sometimes it might even be 10x as many. Ever hear of a game called Summoner? It was a simultaenous PC/PS2 release. The PC version sold 50000 copies, not bad for an actiony RPG type game. The PS2 version sold 500000. You can imagine what happened,the sequel, Summoner 2, was PS2 only. Something similar probably happened to CoD.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[anomnomnomymous]

we've all read of folks who have been playing CounterStrike+Mods to the exclusion of all else (and not buying games) for the past 8 years or so.

You mean the same crowd who also immedeately ran to the (digital) store to buy Counter-Strike: Source/HL2 when that got released, because they knew it'd be a quality game?
Of course I don't deny that the creation of mods can cause someone to not buy any games over a longer period; Then again, it should definitely be taken into account that the amount of goodwill created by allowing a game to have mods is being paid for in the future.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

People... played Summoner? They bought it, even? I thought there was some gigantic rock quarry made to hold those games, one that rivaled the E.T. landfill in size.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[TheMuon]

...Really? First, most RTS's aren't even available on console so if you like that genre you're going PC Second, playing an FPS without a keyboard and mouse is unbarable once you've become used to a keyboard and mouse. Just like joysticks are the best interface for flight sims, keyboard/mouse is the best interface for FPS's. Finally, your arguement that mods destroy the incentive for developers to make games for the PC makes little sense. You're essentially saying its not in the interest of a developer to make good games with any longevity. Developers that make very good long lasting gmaes often earn customer loyalty. It gives them a dependable base of consumers who will buy the company's games and sing the praises of that company's games to their friends. I'm going to buy the StarCraft 2 Terran campaign the day it is released, only available on PC/Mac btw, maybe Linux not sure. I have already know I will love the game and it will be of very high quality, as I've loved every single game every released by Blizzard. Why? Because they've only ever released good games. StarCraft being a great game that I've even found myself playing earlier this year. That did not stop me from buying WarCraft 3.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[TheMuon]

I wouldn't use a gimick game as a good example. Games based on whatever popular movie is out at the moment are almost certainly going to be very poor quality. The developer/publisher aren't trying to sell the game based on the game's merits, simply its title. So they don't really care if the game is of very good quality. They just want to make a quick buck off of it.

I'm not saying there aren't sometimes problems with PC games being compatible with a particular system. Games being guarenteed to work right out of the box is an advantage of consoles. Its just, that's not a very good example.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't agree more - when a developer creates a great game then people will go back to it time and time again. In between bouts of Rainbow Six, I'm bashing through Jade Empire which has just got me back to reinstalling KoTOR with a mind of playing that again... but in amongst that I have a little old ultraportable I use for surfing from my sofa which also runs the classic, original UFO - not there is a game that has eternal appeal...

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I don't have a direct comparison for some obscure low volume game like this Summoner. I found, although a somewhat confusing list, in wiki. It details the number of copies sold for all the consoles and as well as the PC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#Top_PC_sellers_by_genre I'm sorry to say but for comparable games, your 10:1 doesn't hold true. Actually pc titles hold up rather well once you factor in the the age of a console and the release date of the game, like the ps2 verses the ps3 and PC. There are exceptions, but PC game titles hold up quite well. I don't think a company wants to give up those PC sales figures just yet.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Nick Ives]

DLC isn't the main thing for FO3, user mods are. The reason I bought it on PC, in fact the reason I upgraded my graphics card is just so that I can spend the next three years or so playing user-made FO3 mods.

The mods are what made Oblivion and Morrowind into timeless classics.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[nutshell42]

It's a vicious circle. Easy piracy and stupid people saving $25 on their PC by using onboard graphics means PC games sell less. Publishers then treat PC gamers like second class citizens and PC releases have gotten more and more crappy.

I've bought every single game I've played for more than an hour but even I often get it off the net first because I wanna know whether the games actually playable and because the pirated versions often run better and contain less malware.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ever hear of a game called Summoner? It was a simultaenous PC/PS2 release. The PC version sold 50000 copies, not bad for an actiony RPG type game. The PS2 version sold 500000"

That's because it was a horrible pile of shit. 450,000 grandmas buying a shit game for their grandson on the PS2 makes up the sales. Grandmas don't buy PC games since they don't know if it will work or not on their grandkids PCs, so that just leaves the 50,000 suckers who actually bought it on purpose.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Goldberg's Pants]

Let's see how many mods and addon maps the Xbox version of Left 4 Dead gets shall we?

I can honestly, hand on heart say that the last time I had ANY problem with a PC game was maybe five years ago. Neverwinter Nights, patches 1.27 to 1.29. Game wouldn't start due to some weird sound issue.

I have not had any problems since with any title I've bought. In fact that's quite enlightening to realise that. With all the whining about how great consoles are and how stuff just works, the fact is, DRM infested atrocities such as Securom and Starforce aside, PC's are like that for the vast majority.

It's not like people will start forum posts so they can say "The game just worked" is it? No, people will only post if there is a problem, creating the perception that PC gaming is some technological nightmare where in 99.9999% of cases (once again, DRM'ed titles using Securom, Starforce etc... aside) anything you buy WILL just work out of the box.

In fact the PS2 has had more issues for me in the last five years than the PC. (Disk read errors, not playing nice with dual layer disks etc...)

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Goldberg's Pants]

Playing FPS titles on the consoles is like eating soup with a fork. Sure, you can do it, but it's a tedious experience if you've ever used a spoon, and there are much more suitable tools for the job.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Goldberg's Pants]

Wow, that's so spooky. The PC version sold EXACTLY one tenth of the PS2, and such round numbers too. WOW!

Oh yeah, also... "citation needed".

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[neuro88]

The past few GTA releases on the PC were also nearly flawless

Speak for yourself. Towards the end of Vice City, my saves tend to get corrupted. If that doesn't happen, the final part of the game refusers to trigger, so I've never been able to finish the game!

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the numbers for pc are usually way lower because copies sold (at least in the past) has only been based off boxed copies sold from storefronts and not through online distribution methods such as steam.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

Summoner was pre online distribution. For more recent games you have a point.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

I just used round numbers for simplicity, google it.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

Not the old mouse and keyboard thing, the PS2/PS3 have USB ports for a many reasons, one of them is more input options.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

since they don't know if it will work or not on their grandkids PCs,

And THAT is one of the reasons I recommend against playing commercial games on PC's. Thanks for making my point for me.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

I don't think a company wants to give up those PC sales figures just yet.

Not just yet, but it's only a matter of time. The PC game market is slowly but surely turning into the Amiga game market of the early 90's: ports from other platforms, games from European dev houses too poor to do console games, and lots of piracy. Think about it, if you told someone just 8 years ago that they'd be able to play a Fallout game on a console, or play the sequel to Half-Life on a console, or to play Diablo clone with online play on a console, they'd have said no way. Just like they said things like "you'll never play a blood drenched slugathon like DOOM on a kiddie console" back in 93.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

Sure, mods are nice are probably nice for those PC games that don't get a sequel in a decent timespan But I've always been of the opinion that it shouldn't take 6 years to do a sequel, it should only take 1 or 2. Maybe I'm spoiled being a PS1/PS2/PS3 owner, but I know that when a good console game gets released it'll get a sequel/sucessor, and I won't have to wait 6 years. Sure, it won't be a super great leap in game engine over the original, being more of an "evolution and tweaking of what worked well", but it will be out, and they'll have my money.

So which do you think devs would rather have: 50 bucks from you every 6 years or 50 bucks every year or so.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

You're essentially saying its not in the interest of a developer to make good games with any longevity.

It's in their interest to sell you games as often as they can, but that's not exclusive with longevity. It depends on how you define longevity, isn't a year of gameplay enough? What if instead of selling you a game every 6 years, they could sell you one every year or so. What if Diablo III had come out in 2002, and then IV in 2004, and V in 2006 and VI in 2008.

Loyalty to Blizzard is fine, but there comes a time when Bliz fans should tell Blizzard to get off their duffs and start working harder and actually release games in a decent timespan, like they did in their console days. You shouldn't have to had wait 10 years for Bliz to do a Starcraft sequel. Any console dev house worth their salt that had a well regarded hit like that would have the sequel out in 2 years, for their fans. They'd do whatever it took.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Uberbah]

Although mods have their appeal, they also reduce the # of games people buy, thus reducing developer income, we've all read of folks who have been playing CounterStrike+Mods to the exclusion of all else (and not buying games) for the past 8 years or so.

But those long lasting mods keep sales up for that original game...a game where the development and advertising costs were paid off a long time ago, and new sales are nearly straight cash. Counter-Strike has kept sales of Half-Life up long after other games of the same age would be in a collection pack in the bargin bin.

Mods are a good thing for publishers, not a bad thing.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Uberbah]

Ever hear of a game called Summoner? It was a simultaenous PC/PS2 release. The PC version sold 50000 copies, not bad for an actiony RPG type game. The PS2 version sold 500000.

You sound like an vinyl audiophile, saying CD's are crap because album XYZ sounds so much better on vinyl than on compact disc. Never mind that the label did a crappy job on remastering the CD and distorted the audio by cranking up the volume (a new Celine Dion CD plays louder than a Van Halen album from the 90's).

In other words, there are plenty of things that can prevent this from being an apples to apples comparison. Was the game designed with a gamepad in mind, making it more difficult to play with a keyboard/mouse? Did the PC version require vastly more powerful hardware than the console to play as well? Were there major bugs left in the PC version of the game because the publisher had the "ship first, fix later" mentality with QA? Was the gameplay for the PC limited by console restrictions (limited save points)? How about the game itself - were the maps heavily segmented into load zones for console hardware?

Deus Ex II and Thief III: Deadly Shadows are good examples of what I'm talking about. While you could save anywhere you wanted, both games had bad bugs in the PC versions, and had tiny levels compared to their PC-only predecessors, especially Thief III. The entire game could have fit in two or three of the larger levels from Thief II: The Metal Age.

Not just yet, but it's only a matter of time. The PC game market is slowly but surely turning into the Amiga game market of the early 90's: ports from other platforms, games from European dev houses too poor to do console games, and lots of piracy.

Console fanboys foretell the death of PC gaming, just as they've been doing for the last 30 years. Next up, fundamentalist Christians move up the expected date of the Rapture for the 534th time. News at 11.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Goldberg's Pants]

That's as may be, but the fact is you take a console and start hooking a mouse and keyboard to it... That's starting to look a lot like a computer, so why not just USE a computer instead if you have to use those for a decent experience?

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

but the fact is you take a console and start hooking a mouse and keyboard to it... That's starting to look a lot like a computer,

They are computers, special purpose ones, though these days they can also do more general purpose things. I have Linux on my PS3, for example.

so why not just USE a computer instead if you have to use those for a decent experience?

But you don't HAVE to use those, but you can if you want (and if the developer gives you the option). Personally, I like mouse aiming in a PC to Console FPS port, but I can't stand WASD. So If I can, I use the mouse to aim, but the dual shock to move. It sounds awkward but works very well for me.

You also have to remember that there's more game genre's than FPS. and in most cases a dual analog joystick works adequately for those genres (and works "okay" in FPS's)

Let's take one of my favorite PC to console ports, the PS1 version of Diablo. It's a pre dual shock game, You can enable "Advanced" combo button controls, in that case holding R2 and hitting the "shape" buttons and the other shoulder buttons does different things, let me double check my manual so I get em right:

D-Pad = movement
Select = In game menu
Start = Pause
X = Attack
Square = Activate item/pick up item
Triangle = Cast active spell
Circle = use selected belt item
L1 = Quick Health
R1 = Quick Mana
L2 = Speed Spellbook
R2 = Combo button
R2 + Square = Inventory
R2 + X = Character info
R2 + Triangle = Toggle spell between the two enabled spells
R2 + R1 = Quest Log
R2 + L1 = Full Spell book
R2 + L2 = View Automap

Those controls are VERY fast to use, the game plays much much faster in the PS1 version than the PC version. The controls are also very comfortable for longer periods of time compared to the PC version which is VERY tough on the wrist and fingers. In other words, Diablo makes a better console game (for single player at least) than a PC game. It's all about the overall experience

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

lolz, i played that game on the ps1. it was an awwfull port. i almost threw my controller at the wall in frustration. maybe i have a preference to keyboards and you a preference to the controller. wasd controls work excellent and alot faster on a pc than a console. three out of four of your fingers are already on the buttons, which is alot easier to maneuver with than having to swing a joystick up to down or dpad left to right. it might not account to much if you're a gaming noob, but when it comes to getting that .5 second advantage over an online player, it's alot.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are such a corporate whore and seem not to understand the concept of art. I'm gonna call you Cronotard or Cronowhore from now on. Maybe even Tardcloud. I really like that one.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. I hate watered-down yearly releases on consoles that could pass as expansions. I prefer getting my HL engine in new prestine condition many years later, while living off of the expansions that the original spurred and playing other games. Quite frankly, I'm annoyed by the yearly release schedule IW has mustered up for the CoD series. I'm still enjoying CoD 4, and now I'm going to have to jump to an entirely new one that's the same friggin game, instead of them just expanding on the current one that I'm engrossed in.

Also, mods are the best, and a great reason to play PC games. Hardly a problem for developers, and a godsend to players. They keep online communities alive, and give players a better and more diverse experience. I modded the hell out of Oblivion, and made the game a much more enjoyable experience than the half-broken one out of the box. And I didn't play it any longer than your average individual. And xbox L4D players will be waiting tiresomely for their next DLC while PC users will get truckloads of custom maps and mods available.

All in all, PC games are for PC people who don't mind tinkering with their hardware and their games. It's a much more involving experience, and for people who like to be more involved with their gaming. The open-source platform allows people to *snickers* buy hentai games from their local FYE, or dismantle and tweak aspects of a game that they dislike or want changed, and add multitudes of user-created mods. The online community allows people to run and admin 40 person call of duty team or clan servers if they wish, and tweak their servers to make the game faster and more deadly, and add their own and other mods and maps to their game servers that expand upon the gameplay 10 fold. If they want a gamertag, they have the OPTION of using Steam or X-Fire or another service if they want. If they want to just be anonymous noobs and not deal with having a name, they can. People aren't forced to use whatever proprietary online experience shoved into their faces, but whichever they want to use. PC users make their PC experience, whereas on a console it's just given to them. I can understand some people just want to sit on a couch and mash buttons for a while to pass the time and not worry about a thing, but one can hardly say that we're all better off playing consoles. Having the most simple experience for their games is not what's on everyone's mind. For me, the PC experience is far more enjoyable. I like sitting here in front of my hi-res monitor, with my mouse and keyboard, being immersed in a gaming experience that I have full control over, and I don't mind working with the technicalities that come with the diversity.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[CronoCloud]

Hello, Mr Interesting AC.

I hate watered-down yearly releases on consoles that could pass as expansions.

That's more of a problem with sports games, other games tend to be more "improved version of the previous game's engine that improves what we did well and takes out what didn't work so well". I think that's part of a philosophical difference between us I think. I don't mind a game that's what I liked before, somewhat improved, as long as it comes out quickly. If it doesn't come out quickly, I expect more improvements. For example the SOCOM games are "small evolutionary changes over time" on a mostly yearly basis, while Dark Cloud 2 (which came out in 2003) is a great improvement over Dark Cloud 1 (which came out in 2001) Console dev houses tend to have more people working on games than traditional PC game houses, that's one of the reasons their output is so high.

I modded the hell out of Oblivion, and made the game a much more enjoyable experience than the half-broken one out of the box.

Oblivion (GOTY edition) was the first game I bought for my PS3. Here's what I don't get. I constantly read PC gamers saying Oblivion was half-broken and only worth playing if heavily modded, and I don't get it. The game's fine. There's a few minor annoyances, like the leveling system, but that's not that bad and can be dealt with by adjusting difficulty. There's some UI issues, like the large font that's just a little too large on 720P (small fonts can have readability issues on 480i, see the PS1 port of Darkstone for an example), and I wish there was a "fast page down" option in the inventory and spell screens like Final Fantasy games have but that's not really enough to call the entire game "broken". The game is also HUGE as it is, I've got over 105 hours into it already, and I want to complete as much of it as possible in a reasonable timespan. It doesn't matter that I don't have Mehrunes Dagger or the Horse Armor, or the Orrery, there's plenty of stuff in there already and when I'm done, there's more games.

All in all, PC games are for PC people who don't mind tinkering with their hardware and their games. It's a much more involving experience, and for people who like to be more involved with their gaming.

Hmm, that may be another difference, I like the feel of "finishing" a game, the payoff. An endless game (with mods or whatever) delays that payoff, and my gaming time is finite. Time spent on the technical side of playing games (tweaking drivers and settings, downloading mods, making certain everything works together) would be time NOT spent actually playing the games. Which means that even if I like some PC type games, I'll prefer the console port.

The open-source platform allows people to *snickers* buy hentai games from their local FYE, or dismantle and tweak aspects of a game that they dislike or want changed, and add multitudes of user-created mods.

I like Nethack, it's one of the few PC games I play, though I actually play it on my PS3 (and played it on my PS2 before the PS3) I've installed a few patches in it. I just like a good dungeon crawl being an old tabletop D&D player. One of the reasons I like a good console Diablo clone and games like Azure Dreams or Dark Chronicle is the touches of roguelike ancestry I see in them.

Thanks for responding.

I'm not

[Mascot]

The Xbox version does not have SecuROM. But, while certainly a factor, that does not account for all of these issues. I'm guessing the rest is down to insufficient testing on a variety of configurations.

And let's not forget that Chrismas is around the corner. It wouldn't be the first time a release was rushed to make a holiday season.

Personally the game fell off my radar when they confirmed they'd use SecuROM. Hopefully they'll release a non-restricted version in the future. Not to mention a bug fixed one.

I would like to point out that this version of SecuROM has some FADE type functionality in it. That makes it even more difficult to separate bugs caused by the restrictions software gone haywire from the actual game code.

Deciding to never buy titles with SecuROM and similar draconian schemes was the best decision I ever made I think. It saved me from the mediocrity that was Spore, and now from this bugfest.

Re:I'm not

[Kokuyo]

Yes, EA still owes me money for Spore. You can't return opened PC games after all.

I might pirate GTAIV. I hear it works better that way and, again, they still owe me one.

Re:I'm not

[iainl]

Take Two/Rockstar owe you money because EA's DRM on Spore was rubbish? How do you figure that?

Re:I'm not

[Goldberg's Pants]

I can see a vague logic. Two heads of the same beast. I mean if Herman Goering came and kicked you in the balls, I'm fairly sure you'd tar Hitler, Goebbels etc... With the same brush.

I have no idea why I chose the Nazi's for that analogy, but there you go. I realise it's unlikely Goering would come and kick you in the balls, but ah well.

Re:I'm not

[Khyber]

Yes, you can 'return' the game. Go to the store and try. If they say no, you leave and do this:

You call the credit card company, and you say "I want a chargeback and refund on my card. (make sure you know the transaction number - check through your records) I bought this game, it was not of promised quality, they refuse to refund my money despite repeated attempts to return the item with receipt and all original content included. I want my refund on grounds of failure to deliver."

You get your refund and get to keep the game. The CC company won't even bother to ask any questions.

Re:I'm not

[EpsCylonB]

I don't have a credit card, actually I feel pretty good about that.

Re:I'm not

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say it's more likely to have Goebbels come kick your balls than EA giving you money back for a rotten product.

Re:I'm not

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying you don't think you could handle having a credit card, and that knowledge makes you feel good?

CCs are great as a security buffer between you and your money.

You know you really fail when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirates can't even fix your game.

Re:You know you really fail when...

[elrous0]

At least the pirates weren't out $50 for this turd.

This is sad...

[atari2600]

I was really expecting a high quality release for the PC after what they did for the PS3 (crashing issues with data being handled the way it was by Gamespy servers). I am a huge GTA fan. I used to play the 10 minute trial of GTA on my PC as a high schooler and when I finally played GTA III, GTA:VC(best GTA imo) on the PC, I was sold enough to buy a TV and a PS2 to play GTA:SA.

I then bought GTA:SA for the PC, beat it. I bought GTA:4 for the PS3 and then for the XBOX360 and beat it on both (different ways of doing things was fun). I was hoping to play it again on the PC just for the improved aiming mechanics but this is a major disappointment. Cmon Rockstar, you guys can't be failing like this :(

Throw the anchor, this is one bad port

[Anonymous Coward]

The controls menu is non-existant, it has a picture of an xbox 360 controller and prompts you to push left and right to pick a control setup.

Also, at least Devil May Cry (terrible game, btw) had a feature to pick resolution!

Re:Throw the anchor, this is one bad port

[PhilHibbs]

So does GTA4

Bought this POS.

[juuri]

Despite my concerns over all the hoopla DRM I purchased this via Steam. Let's go over a few of the problems:

a) ~15 Gig. Really? Really.
b) Needs new versions of at least 2, maybe 3 Microsoft programs to be installed before playing.
c) Installs some fucking crap ass community software that was never asked for or mentioned when making the initial purchase over steam. This shiet from Rockstar goes in the system tray and puts up a fricken splash screen at every reboot on your desktop just to play their game.
d) The inane pushing of the new Games for Windows stuff. Oh I have to create a local G4W profile even if I never plan on playing online?
e) During loading it displays a black screen for 3-4 minutes on my box with 4gig/7200rpm disk. It's a laptop so at least I can feel the disk spinning to make sure it is doing something.
f) The resolution change takes SO long I never get to confirm it before it switches back when I am actually in the game.
g) The first time I ran it with defaults, no textures loaded until about 30 seconds *after* the opening cinematic was done and my player was sitting in the car.
h) Running the benchmark twice within one session causes a crash on my machine.
i) It has already crashed multiple times. ... since I only boot into windows to play games like this it has basically rendered itself a total fucking disgrace. Valve better be refunding my money or they will lose an up-till-now loyal customer. I've been playing games for like 28 years (GIT AWF MY L4WN) and this is the most buggy piece of shit my eyes have seen since some of the Atari Jaguar games.

Re:Bought this POS.

[mobby_6kl]

Well GTA hasn't finished downloading yet (seed fuckers! Err, I mean, come on Steam!) but having played Bully, I'm not surprised at all.

I'll start with what was my first experience after installing and starting the game. At the first start I actually got stuck in the menus for a while because of the retarded default bindings. Who the hell sets Left Alt as "action" or "confirm"? What's wrong with the Enter key? I think returning to the previous menu used also something stupid, like left shift, though it seems that I've successfully repressed that memory. Thankfully you can change most of the keys, but still, did they even try playing it once with the defaults? Of course, there's also no mouse in the menus.

Since it took them almost two years to port, it looks like ass now, but also runs like that as well. Seriously, Crysis is much smoother (and much much prettier) than this piece of shit. I'm talking about 30fps and sometimes 10fps on a 2.8 Q6600 and 8800GT, while Crysis averages at about 35 in benchmarks on the same hardware. While almost everything is just ugly, the crosshairs in aiming mode are horrendous. They stretch to most of the screen (at 1680x1050 at least), but it looks like they're actually the size of regular FPS crosshairs like those in Q3 and UT, making them very pixilated and jaggy.

Now back to input and controls. Not only are the defaults retarded, but you're also supposed to repeatedly press some of the buttons just to move on a skateboard, for instance. Since one of the keys is alt while Tab opens the map, from time to time the game gets unexpectedly minimized. Aiming's extremely awkward as well, since you have to wrestle with auto aiming as well as almost unusable mouse sensitivity, which no amount of dicking around with the Razer drivers or game settings could fix.

Of course it also crashed a few times for no good reason. I think I've had much more complaints about it while playing, but this should be enough to demonstrate the point.

Re:Bought this POS.

[mike2R]

c) Installs some fucking crap ass community software that was never asked for or mentioned when making the initial purchase over steam. This shiet from Rockstar goes in the system tray and puts up a fricken splash screen at every reboot on your desktop just to play their game.

This really annoyed me as well - Startup Guard caught it trying to register that community crap to run at startup. Denied it but it still keeps itself running after closing the game. I mean why? What chance is there that I want that crap running 24/7 on my PC? Reminds me of the last time I installed Real Player. Right click on the tray icon and you can uncheck "run at system start" so at least you can turn it off, but it is still out of order.

Not had any of the other problems you mention though - well except the 15GB (!!) download from Steam, I'd have bought a physical copy if I'd known it was that big.

Re:Bought this POS.

[Degro]

Games for Windows is a load of crap. I thought it was great at first because Crysis and Fallout 3 both had full support for the USB XBox 360 controllers out of the box. All I had to do was plug it in. Great, I like to relax and sit back with a controller at my PC like I do at with actual Xbox. Then I rushed out to buy Call of Duty: World at War for my PC because it also had the logo. No controller support whatsoever. WTF? What does Games for Windows even mean then if it's not going to be a coherent Xbox like experience for windows gaming? The whole effort feels very much like scam now.

Re:Bought this POS.

[The Moof]

Games for Windows is a good idea done wrong, and only if you have an Xbox360. I thought it was nice to have a cross-platform friends and all that. However, it's very poorly implemented.

• They tie settings and saves into your profile and you have to be signed in (either locally or on Live). There are workarounds for this, but I'm not so hot on extra work to play your save game files.
• If you want to compare achievements with your PC version and someone's Xbox version, you can't (without pen and paper). Live thinks that a version for windows and a version for the 360 is two completely different games.
• When it opts to update your games it sometimes offers no feedback that it's working, or that it has completed successfully. It usually just dumps you back to the desktop when completed.
• Sometimes, it's the culprit for game crashes and BSOD's.

They should've added it as an optional feature instead of making it a requirement to use. My first experience with it was in Fallout 3. At first it was nifty, but after coming across all of the problems mentioned above, I'm not so sure it's worth the hassle.

Re:Bought this POS.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is the most buggy piece of shit my eyes have seen

Have you played Splinter Cell: Double Agent on PC? THAT is a buggy piece of shit.

Re:Bought this POS.

[Draek]

Any single one of your problems, by itself, would've been enough to turn me off from the game (well, maybe not the 15 GB install, though it's still not nice). But *all* of them? I am treating GTA4 like a disease from now on, thanks for the warning.

Re:Bought this POS.

[fm6]

What does Games for Windows even mean then if it's not going to be a coherent Xbox like experience for windows gaming?

One word: branding.

Re:Bought this POS.

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Yep, ~15GB. Enjoying your complete lack of physical copies and entirely downloadable content now?
b) Of course. Microsoft needs to know what you're doing so they can approve it, remember?
c) That's not "sheit", it's a "value added program content"! You can chat with people!!! And it's freeeeeeee!! Wake up and smell the Web 2.0, fool!
d) VALUE. ADDED. PROGRAM. CONTENT. ALREADY. ENJOY THE COMMUNITY, DAMNIT.
e) So get a fasterer computer and help the economy already. Unless you're a terrorist. You're not a terrorist, are you? Are you?
f) So get a not-crappy monitor and help the economy already. Unless you're a socialist. You're not a socialist, are you? Are you?
g) No, no, that's not a problem! That's part of the thrill and artistic direction of GTA IV! It's representative of your character's haze when first starting the game and unfamiliar with everything! Get it?
h) So stop running benchmarks. Everything works perfectly fine and there is no need to worry. Stop it.
i) Bugs are the new norm. Didn't you get the memo? /me gets off your lawn

Re:Bought this POS.

[prezkennedy.org]

If you want a coherent XBOX experience, get an XBOX. That's not what PC gaming is. They're trying, and look at how terrible they're doing it.

Re:Bought this POS.

[Khyber]

"c) Installs some fucking crap ass community software that was never asked for or mentioned when making the initial purchase over steam. This shiet from Rockstar goes in the system tray and puts up a fricken splash screen at every reboot on your desktop just to play their game."

That's one reason EA has a class-action suit against them. So perhaps you should start talking to a lawyer.

Re:Bought this POS.

[lolocaust]

Does this mean I can't use a standard USB pad to play the game? That's enough to not even pirate this game.

Re:Bought this POS.

[svallarian]

It should work, it's required that if they have the GFW logo, there has to be Xbox controller support. Not that I've ever gotten the fscking thing working though, I bought the wireless controller and only been able to get it to work in one game (Raving Rabbits) and not the two that NEED it (Lego Indiana Jones and Start Wars Lego).

mod parent up

[FugitiveMind]

I also ran into the 'no textures' issue when I first started a new game. Tire skid marks and shadows also result in really strange graphical 'twitching' on my system.

I bought the HD4870X2 so I could run demanding games, but GTA4 doesn't seem to want any part of it. This is definitely the worst gaming purchase I have ever made.

Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[meist3r]

Seriously, so many developers and publishers have been complaining about the huge rate of PC title piracy (e.g. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20567 or http://www.videogamer.com/news/18-10-2008-9693.html) and how much more they love their locked-down consoles. Isn't this move the smartest thing Rockstar could have done?

I mean If I made 400$m with my latest game on the consoles alone and I feared I wouldn't sell as many PC copies as I could have I just make the PC version the shittiest experience you can have. Horrendously high hardware requirements, terrible online components, cluttered with spy/mal/adware. That will turn off as many PC customers as possible and make it less attractive for pirates.

I bet the console sales figures of GTA IV will go up again now that many PC gamers have realized that they'd rather buy this for their console than deal with all the crap. Watch for the spike!

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I rather hope many PC gamers have realized that they shoudn't buy the game at all.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the console sales figures of GTA IV will go up again now that many PC gamers have realized that they'd rather buy this for their console than deal with all the crap. Watch for the spike!

It's 6 months on since the console release, I'd be willing to bet more on a spike of *used* GTA4 console sales.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[meist3r]

It's 6 months on since the console release, I'd be willing to bet more on a spike of *used* GTA4 console sales.

I didn't even think about it that way but you're probably right to some extend. But that just goes to show that no matter how you try to "shape" your customer's options it will backfire.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[GravityStar]

I currently have gift-certificate (50 EUR) for a free game. I've had it since 3 months ago, and I've yet to buy a game. Why?

Because I already know I will be disappointed. It's happened too many times to ignore, every time I buy a game, it manages to suck.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

well, i would imagine that you are getting the wrong games then. there are good games for sale, but it seems that you are not buying them.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[GuiJay]

Sadly, the game publisher have some ground in regards to piracy. It's probably impossible to determine an actual number, but with patented guess-timations, I would be surprised if there wasn't at least 1 pirated copy in use for each copy sold.

Most people that I know who pirate games use the same old arguments "I just want to try it out" or "I don't want to pay for this, it's not worth my money". This angers me greatly.

Like everything else in life, PC game pirates exists because there is a demande for them. Modern DRM appeared in response to that.

It's sad really, but your idea is crazy enough that it might be true - game publisher trying to push people towards consoles, where piracy is very low due to the technical knowledge needed to do it.

Either way, people disapoint me. I like my PC and I like my PC games, but I fear we'll be driven underground soon enough by the masses of idiots who don't understand that not paying for something is the very deffinition of stealing.

As a side note, I'm up to about 20 hours in GTA4 on the PC and I haven't had a single crash, hang up, or problem.

(sorry for the spelling)

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the exception of Fallout 3, I haven't played a genuinely good game in years. I mean something I can actually play and enjoy and think about for an extended period of time. Something with actual *depth*. Your flavor-of-the-month overrated FPS (Half-Life 2, BioShock, etc) are fine, but they're as disposable as a decent movie. See it once, never again. For $50-60? No thanks.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Psx29]

I think you're forgetting that pirating Xbox 360 games is ridiculously easy.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

...I feared I wouldn't sell as many PC copies as I could have I just make the PC version the shittiest experience you can have.

So who makes this SecuROM DRM software then? Oh, Sony. I'm sure they really want to help Windows market share. Yup.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Narishma]

Games with depth don't sell. See ETQW.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

i think that you are using "good" where i would use "great". for me, a good game is something i enjoyed playing. you know, those upper 50% where the interface and game system didn't hamper my enjoyment. a great game would be one that i couldn't wait to get back to when i was at work, was totally immersed in, and didn't answer my phone during.

recently played games that are examples:

stalker: shadow of chernobyl
great storyline, interesting world, well-done weapons and inventory system, and plenty of exploring to do. can't vouch for the ending as i am still playing. i waited a couple years and now it is $20.

GTA: san andreas
i seriously played this for well over a year. i played the shit out of that game. sometimes i would just go for a drive and listen to mp3s. still thinking about picking it back up and starting over.

jade empire (PC)
waited a long time to pick it up because i didn't know that there was a PC port of it. good game, solid story. linear but it gives the illusion of choice and i was totally immersed in the plot and world. well worth playing for the bargain bin price it is sold for now.

or how about free:

wolfenstein: enemy territory
still play this when killing AI characters gets boring and i need to shoot some real people. depending on the server the games can be really intense.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[meist3r]

Get A Vampyre Story ... there's nothing really comparable on the market right now so you can't raise your expectations too much but it's fun and these guys seriously need some support. It's only 30 bucks and you can get a classic game on top. I'd suggest Diablo 2 :P

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[meist3r]

Tell that to the studios ... they're the ones that came up with that whole notion of consoles being less inviting for pirates. I think it's even the opposite, at least they don't have to worry about drivers and all that.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Blakey Rat]

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars didn't sell because it's a bad game. I've played every team-based multiplayer game since Tribes (the golden standard), and ETQW didn't even stand up to the original Enemy Territory, not by a long shot.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Immostlyharmless]

The reason ETQW didn't sell was because it sucked compared to its ET predecessor. They modified the game from an FPS to a vehicular combat style of game. Then they dicked having equal player abilities for both sides. And finally, they messed up having a rather stunted looking walking/running animation that was an absolute lag fest. I had a friend BUY me the game and its still not installed. It's completely unplayable unless you play with a graphic nuking .cfg file

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Draek]

Well, dunno, when I'm faced with the attrocity that is MS Office on Windows I don't suddenly buy a Mac and think "well, the OSX version is probably better". If a company manages to develop a huge, steaming pile of turd on one platform, chances are the same products for other platforms isn't any better. In fact, their *other* products are probably just as bad, so I'll just stay away from the company.

So, goodbye Rockstar, see ya when the words "no DRM" and "completely bug-free" appear in a review of one of your products. Which from the looks of it, won't be any time soon.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[IamTheRealMike]

That's a pretty strong assertion. Last time I looked, you had to mod your xbox, which required - in the best case - special equipment and an Xbox of the right generation. And then you risk getting your console banned from Live if you ever let it connect again.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Narishma]

I don't agree with that. If you thought it was worse than ET then you probably expected it to be something else that it is. A lot of people expected it to be an ET clone and were disappointed. Others thought it was a Battlefield clone and were disappointed when it wasn't. Others still were expecting a Quake clone and weren't pleased. That's the big problem the game had I think, in that it wasn't a clone of any of those games, which is what the majority expected, but a game of it's own.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Reapman]

It's worked on me... I buy games for my PS3 now, much greater chance of it working then on PC thanks to DRM. Great example is I lent a friend my copy of MGS4 since I don't have time to play it. Wouldn't work on PC's nearly as well. Since only one person is using it I don't see how it's pirating, either. When he's done i'll get it back and play it.

I think the PC is a superior environment to play on but I'm unwilling to buy into the DRM stuff. The only games I play on my PC now are MMO's and Civ4. When Civ5 comes out with a 3 install limit and a stick to beat yourself with for every impure thought I'll probably cry :'(. Then download the crack.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Blakey Rat]

Well, ok, but let's go through the details:
1) The Run system had no stamina/energy meter, meaning your character could run until the cows come home.
2) The deployable system was plain retarded. You could only place items where you the developers saw fit (in a very inflexible grid system), deployment took an *extremely* long time, and deployables were virtually trivial to destroy.
3) Humans had many more vehicles than the alien race. Combine this with point 1, and vehicles were almost insignificant for the alien race. (You could run as fast as drive, when you consider the backtracking it took to run back to the vehicle station.)
4) The missions were confusing. How many times did you see people in the "portal" missions hanging out at the wrong side of the portal with no clue where the action was?
5) The ending of the majority of maps were almost never in doubt. Some maps the humans had a strong advantage, some the aliens had a strong advantage, I don't think a single one was actually well-balanced.

I'm not comparing the game with Battlefield. (Speaking of buggy games, Battlefield: 2142 was a turd!) Like I said above, I'd consider Tribes the golden standard in this genre of games, and ETQW ain't even close to being Tribes.

But all that aside, the proof is in the pudding. Log on and look at how many people are playing it, Xbox *or* PC-- no players = bad game.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[mujadaddy]

wolfenstein: enemy territory ...intense

++
BEST
GAME
EVER

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Narishma]

1) Quake or Unreal games don't have any limits on running. I'm not sure about ET as I only played a little ET Pro but I think it didn't have any limits either.

2) There are good reasons that you can only deploy on certain places. I also don't agree that they take too long or are easy to destroy. They are that way because of balance issues.

3) Humans have 2 extra vehicles. A boat that is pretty much useless and a second flyer that is very rarely used. It's balanced by the fact that the strogg vehicles have different abilities. For example the Dessecrator and Cyclops can strafe, the Hog can ram other vehicles/deployables, the Icaruses can be a pain to destroy. The point is that even if they have more vehicles that doesn't make the humans better. In fact if you look at the stats more maches are won by the Strogg than the GDF. Also you can respawn at whatever spawnpoint that your team has secured, so you don't have to backtrack to get the vehicles you want.

4) There are tutorials that teach you the objectives of every map in the game and what you are supposed to do.

5) A couple of maps favor one side over the other, but in general it's very well balanced. But then you can't know that if you didn't play the game for very long.

As for your last point, just because a game (or music or movie or whatever) is popular doesn't mean it's any good.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Blakey Rat]

1) Quake or Unreal games don't have any limits on running. I'm not sure about ET as I only played a little ET Pro but I think it didn't have any limits either.

And? It's still pointless to have a mode in the game where you move faster, but there's no limit to how much its used. Why bother? Why not just always have your character move the faster speed? It was a bad game mechanic; the "run" mechanic only works if there's some limit to it.

2) There are good reasons that you can only deploy on certain places. I also don't agree that they take too long or are easy to destroy. They are that way because of balance issues.

Yah; the coders were too lazy to have the engine determine where things would fit (you know, that Tribes had perfected a decade ago), so they just hard-coded locations into the maps.

As for your last point, just because a game (or music or movie or whatever) is popular doesn't mean it's any good.

It is if a large portion of the "good"-ness of the game depends on there being a lot of players! Are you saying that World of Warcraft would be a good game if there were only 5 players on each server?

Look, you like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I get it. But that doesn't make it a good game; in fact, I'd argue it just means you haven't played enough games of that genre to get a sense of which are good and which aren't.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Either way, people disapoint me. I like my PC and I like my PC games, but I fear we'll be driven underground soon enough by the masses of idiots who don't understand that not paying for something is the very deffinition of stealing.

You make good points but things like these make you just look clueless.
Copying is not the same as stealing because nothing (physical) is taken from anyone.
And paying for something does not mean it is not stealing, if you just take your neighbours car without his consent you stole it, even if you left him a billion dollars and a new car - while he has a lot of new stuff he still has lost his car.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Narishma]

And? It's still pointless to have a mode in the game where you move faster, but there's no limit to how much its used. Why bother? Why not just always have your character move the faster speed? It was a bad game mechanic; the "run" mechanic only works if there's some limit to it.

Of course it's not free. When you run you make louder breathing noises so are easier to spot. If you fire your weapon while you run the spread is horrible. You can't scope your weapon while running.

Look, you like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I get it. But that doesn't make it a good game; in fact, I'd argue it just means you haven't played enough games of that genre to get a sense of which are good and which aren't.

I played a lot of similar games (RTCW, W:ET, BF, Assault mode in UT, Tribes, Tremulous) but they only have a small set of features. There's no other game that has class based gameplay with objectives, vehicles and asymetric teams.

It is if a large portion of the "good"-ness of the game depends on there being a lot of players! Are you saying that World of Warcraft would be a good game if there were only 5 players on each server?

There are enough people playing that I can find a game whenever I want to play (6500 players today from the stats website). It's not as much as some other games but it's enough to enjoy the game.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, antics like this would turn me off of buying ANY Rockstar game in the future, and I'd tell all my friends to beware of their antics too.
If you fear PC piracy, don't dick with the market, just leave it be. If you really don't have a good feeling, stay away. That a PC port would be released probably did hold off some possible buyers of the console version. But now that I see what Rockstar did, I wouldn't buy the console version even if they paid me. I'm done.
I'm waiting for Saints Row 2 for PC. Time will tell if it too is over-burdened with DRM.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So buy two. 2 x XBOX360, one of them being the lowest end edition you can possibly buy (for modding, of course) is way, way, way under the price of even half of a gaming PC...

(Why do I have to explain this to everyone?)

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[daybot]

I understand what you're saying, and I agree with you, but it is amusing that you're using a blu-ray based games console to avoid DRM!

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Reapman]

DRM, by itself doesn`t bother me. DRM that gets in my way in some way does. PS3 games are actually region FREE, unlike other DVD based systems, so in that way it`s actually more open then say some competitors.

Now if the game locked itself to my console somehow then I`d be tell em to burn. Same thing with Steam, sure it has DRM, but doesn`t hurt me none so I don`t mind it.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, alternatively, as interesting as it might have been, I'll cross GTA IV off my shopping list forever.

Re:Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only that there are people like miself whose last console was the SNES, but upgrades his computer every 3/4 months...

seriously, rockstar fucking knows better.

[DragonTHC]

This is either a strategy or a colossal fail. Since there is G4W live shit and FailRom drm installed bundled, I'm leaning towards strategy.

I own every GTA game ever made. I opted for GTA IV on 360. I actually got a 360 for it. That being said, I'm a diehard PC gamer. I prefer PC for every game.

I could have waited, but when I heard GTA IV was a 'G4W live' only release, I knew rockstar had fucked up.

The others have all been flawless PC releases. They just know better.

Re:seriously, rockstar fucking knows better.

[spiderbitendeath]

I refuse to buy any game for computer that wants me to install that Games for Windows Live. I own all the other GTA games for computer, but from the looks of it, if it's going that road, I won't be buying any more.

customer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not really satisfied with the release and I was hoping for much better graphics than on xbox, but as far as crashing goes, I haven't had any. And I read here that there is no update for windows live for Vista 64, yet it updated mine just nicely and it works as it should.

There is obviously way to much of ballast that comes with the game, little to no improvements comparing to the xbox , huge hardware requirements and some graphics bugs I have noticed. All and all this game shouldn't be released for another six months for the developers to adress all the issues, it's too bad that greed prevailed. Good polished story driven games are dying, and i'm very sad about it.

Oh and i have a Mac Pro 8-core 3.0, 8800 GT with 10 GB of ram and because of the 512 vram i cant set the settings as i wish but am limited to medium texture quality and maximum resolution of 1680x1050.

Wait, you mean besides the DRM?

[crhylove]

Wait, you mean besides the DRM?

Rockstar uses RenderWare?

[cheekyboy]

Doesnt rockstar use renderwares engine?

They did used to sell the engine for 250k, so if it runs on 4core intel or 3core xbox360, it shouldnt matter. Its like an OS.

Maybe renderware is buggy, or rockstars usage of it is shite.

Doesnt anyone do testing? Is it really that hard to find 200k to find 8 testers?

Re:Rockstar uses RenderWare?

[robthebloke]

No, they used to until EA bought out criterion. They used their new RAGE engine (R* advanced game engine) for GTA4.

Re:Rockstar uses RenderWare?

[Goldberg's Pants]

Not that advanced by the sounds of things.

Re:Rockstar uses RenderWare?

[ikono]

Rockstar Advanced game engine engine? Do they call it that?

Re:Rockstar uses RenderWare?

[GigaplexNZ]

Doesnt anyone do testing? Is it really that hard to find 200k to find 8 testers?

Wow, you really undervalue the testers...

Re:Rockstar uses RenderWare?

[CelticLo]

Yes. It's just called RAGE internally. Table Tennis on the 360 was the first use, then GTA4 and Midnight Club LA

The worst part is...

[Anonymous Coward]

that people LOOVVVVEEEE steam.

It's still a piece of shit system.

Steam is the ONLY reason counterstrike has ads. Since they can force updates down your throat whenever they like, it's far easier push out ads without having a portion of your players reject that particular patch.

Re:The worst part is...

[wc_paladin]

when did CS get ads? are you talking about the welcome screen when you join a server? because that's specified by the server, and clans usually put their site or something in there. Those sometimes have ads, but I don't remember seeing any other ads in the game.

Re:The worst part is...

[compro01]

What ads in CS?

Re:The worst part is...

[VeNoM0619]

He more than likely is... my favorite "Source" engine game server was a Left 4 Dead server I recently tried... Since you can't pick the server, it will find a dedicated server randomly... now some assholes who host them fuck with the settings of your game (changing difficulty settings regardless of what you specify, even maps that you don't specify), but the best one I went to was one with an ad welcome page. Not only did it have an annoying audio clip, but it had 2 error messages that automatically Alt+Tabbed me out of the game (once for each message, resulting in 2 manual alt+tabs total) requiring a response to a Yes/No error message.

Don't even get me started on how security prone this idea is. Randomly selecting a server that can throw whatever insecure website it wants? Expect an exploit server very very fucking soon Valve...

The idea of random dedicated servers was decent, but is now being fucked with by the hosts, making the game less and less enjoyable every day. Something that should be fixed soon, since idiots don't understand what a 'dedicated' server is supposed to mean. (Do you really care that some random person who creates a game on your server is playing on easy mode? or playing on a map that YOU WONT be playing)

Re:The worst part is...

[FrostDust]

After you click "connect to server", a progress bar appears as it loads the game. Under the progress bar there's a small banner ad. I guess I don't play that much, because the only ads I've ever seen were for Left 4 Dead, or a placeholder banner, I guess because no one bought the ad space yet.

Re:The worst part is...

[aztektum]

now some assholes who host them fuck with the settings of your game (changing difficulty settings regardless of what you specify, even maps that you don't specify)

Nothing new. Server admins have always been able to come on and change maps, kick players, whatever. It is afterall THEIR SERVER. Stop whining and host your own.

Re:The worst part is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the point that you CAN'T PICK WHAT SERVER YOU PLAY ON?

Are you retarded?

Re:The worst part is...

[gangien]

CS 1.6 has ads in game, on top of the player listing(tab) and in some of their maps like de_dust2.

how is this very newsworthy?

[nimbius]

if a product is bad enough, you have a right as a consumer to seek a refund. now if they had been class-actioned due to the product, or the corporate headquarters had been razed by a swarm of angry customers bent on the flesh of the board of directors, that would be news.

personally i like pc games. i keep an old windows box around for 'em, and i could never get used to the "mystery box" feel most consoles have.

Yes, Rockstar.

[crhylove]

Yes, Rockstar, please tell us: Why is it so hard to write good Windows code? How is the PS3 so much easier? Why don't you let us play the games at much higher resolution on much better hardware? Is it really that important to sell mediocre crap and scrape every miserable penny? Is that also the motivation behind the DRM? Why don't you just sell a good product at a good price and stop trying to coerce the market. It won't work. Eventually some other game house will make your type of game, only better, and with better graphics and performance. And people will buy that instead.

Re:Yes, Rockstar.

[crhylove]

PS If you're hiring a beta tester... I'd love to help you solve these problems. I require late hours and long lunches.

Re:Yes, Rockstar.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually some other game house will make your type of game, only better, and with better graphics and performance. And people will buy that instead.

I disagree with your standards, but there's already been a GTA killer out for months which is actually way more fun than GTA itself, and it's called Saints Row 2. The graphics are inferior, the storyline is juvenile and the deathmatch multiplayer isn't quite as deep as GTA's. On the other hand, the single player game itself is REALLY fun with tons of side missions to do, the character customization system is really really deep, and the game supports full co-op to the point where you can join and quit your friends' game seamlessly.

This review sums it up perfectly. Please note that I'm no ZP shill, and I figured out how awesome Saints Row 2 was long before this review came out. Also, there's a PC port coming which will hopefully be a lot nicer than GTA4's port.

Re:Yes, Rockstar.

[Goldberg's Pants]

I remember when the PS3 came out developers whined about hard it was to develop for.

And by saying "Is it really that important to sell mediocre crap and scrape every miserable penny", you just described Capitalism.

Re:Yes, Rockstar.

[crhylove]

Well hopefully in a fully functional and healthy capitalist economy SOMEbody sells GOOD stuff that outsells mediocre crap.

The current system isn't really capitalism, it's more of a corporate oligarchy, where there is very little real competition, and hence product quality goes down (McDonald's, Wal Mart, GM), while the prices do not really exponentially decrease with economies of scale like they are supposed to.

I'm all for capitalism, which in the current system puts me pretty firmly AGAINST corporations in general, who seem to be practicing localized authoritarianism and not competing at all.

My main point was that the PS3 is much harder to code for than a Windows box, and that Rockstar's failure to deliver good Windows code can't have been an oversight.

But why are they so upset?

[LarsWestergren]

I mean, you get 4 programs on your harddrive for the price of one -
1) SecureROM
2) Games for Windows LIVE
3) Rockstar Social Club
4) An early Beta version of some game

Sounds like a great deal to me.

Re:But why are they so upset?

[Svippy]

I mean, you get 4 programs on your harddrive for the price of one - 1) SecureROM 2) Games for Windows LIVE 3) Rockstar Social Club 4) An early Beta version of some game

Sounds like a great deal to me.

With four applications, you can understand some of them might not work. As far as I can tell, Rockstar Games made sure 3 out of 4 of these applications worked! Brilliant!

Re:But why are they so upset?

[infoslack]

Somehow those "4" programs had 6 uninstallers when I was "removing" it. I'm still wiping my system this weekend. This was bad.

I wouldn't know - boycotting

[snarfies]

I was really looking forward to buying GTA4 for the PC. I am the proud owner of GTA3, GTA:VC, and GTA:SA. But I can't buy GTA4, and this was so deeply dissapointing I actually sent Rockstar/Take2 a physical paper letter (which I am sure they will laugh at, ball up, and throw in the trash).

The problem? Mandatory online activation enforced by SecuROM. It isn't so much the latter I object to (though I DO object to it) as the former. I sometimes actually go back and install a game 5, 10, or even more years later and replay it if it was any good. What happens 10 years from now when the machine I am required to connect to no longer exists? Sure, I'm sure I can download a crack, or a patch, or something by then, but I want to own a fully working game right out of the box, not crippleware.

I know that the same applies to MMORPGs as well, but guess what? I have never, and never will, buy one of those, either.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[The Analog Kid]

I know that the same applies to MMORPGs as well, but guess what? I have never, and never will, buy one of those, either.

MMOs such as WOW don't have DRM per say. I guess you could consider Warden DRM, it's more like spyware though, and it doesn't stay on your system when you uninstall the game. Games like that don't need DRM because you need to pay for access to play. I guess you could go to a private server, but many of those have broken features like spells that don't work or instances you can't play.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[Mascot]

I don't see why you draw a comparison to MMOs. It's not in the same ballpark.

It is understood that no MMO will keep running forever. Those servers aren't an activation scheme. They are *the game*.

It is not understood that a single player game will refuse to run in ten years time (assuming you have the antiquated hardware and OS to run it still).

Anyways, I totally agree. I never buy an application anymore without first contacting the developers and asking them whether it has any kind of online activation scheme. It helps me avoid the trap, and it serves the dual purpose of informing them it cost them a sale.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[Jim Hall]

I was really looking forward to buying GTA4 for the PC. I am the proud owner of GTA3, GTA:VC, and GTA:SA. But I can't buy GTA4, and this was so deeply dissapointing I actually sent Rockstar/Take2 a physical paper letter (which I am sure they will laugh at, ball up, and throw in the trash).

Take it from someone who's actually played GTA4 (on the PS3) - you aren't missing much. Gotta say, this version isn't as interesting or exciting as the GTA3 or GTA:SA.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I still play III, VC and SA and have been waiting for this release for months. I've watched probably every YouTube video from the console people while I've been squirming with impatience.

And then the news came. SecureRom.

Screw 'em. As much as I want this damn game, I'm not spending money with people who treat me like a thief and install malware on my PC.

I took the money I'd saved for this and instead gave it to Stardock and bought the new expansion to Galactic Civilizations II. It seems pretty bizarre, because I've been playing the original release of GC II for two years, but it was well worth the money and Stardock didn't treat me like a criminal by installing malware.

Dear Rockstar,

Screw you.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[justinlindh]

I've played through GTA4 on the Xbox 360 and would like to disagree with you. It's an excellent game and the amount of assets in the game is mind blowing. Easily the most advanced "sandbox" game ever made, and evolutionary (not revolutionary) for the series. But that's all opinion.

I hate to beat the dead horse of debate, but this really is just one more nail in the coffin of PC gaming. The experience of this game on console was:
1. Buy game
2. Insert game into console
3. Play game
Result: Enjoy the game exactly as intended by the publisher without tweaking any settings, installing dependent applications, dodging DRM, or wasting 13gb of disk space. Time spent: 5 minutes, tops.

The PC experience, from what I'm reading on /. and other forums:
1. Purchase game from Steam or other retailer
2. Install game, along with several other TSR applications
3. Create gaming profile for G4W
4. Hit self over head for having a controller other than the support Xbox 360 one. Install another app to remap existing controller to emulate X360 one and probably miss some functionality in the process. Run to store to buy controller or play with keyboard + mouse instead
5. Pray like hell that no other installed application clashes with SecurRom, and disable/remove apps if so
6. Launch game. If it launches successfully, spend at least 10 minutes tweaking video settings to make the game run adequately on hardware. Not for the technologically challenged, who will play with a sub-optimal experience instead
Result: Average gaming experience fraught with frustration and annoying applications unnecessarily using resources on your computer. Mandatory hard drive storage space taken. Potentially more expensive, with the purchase of a controller. Time spent: Around an hour.

The problem is that this is becoming commonplace in the arena of PC gaming. I've always been, and will continue to be, a PC gamer (as well as console), but am finding myself preferring the console experience so I don't clutter my computer with garbage and waste time that could be spent enjoying my purchase instead of fighting my computer. With the price of a good graphics card alone approaching the price of an entire console, it's becoming more and more difficult to justify PC gaming. This is sad.

I expect simpler and more innovative games (maybe even indie types) to eventually be the only ones available on PC. Games like World of Goo are affordable, fun, simple to install and run, and don't demand an expensive rig to play. In the end, it's a more enjoyable experience. The AAA games are increasingly becoming a huge hassle, and recent game sales often don't justify the price of development for the platform.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[shutdown -p now]

But I can't buy GTA4, and this was so deeply dissapointing I actually sent Rockstar/Take2 a physical paper letter (which I am sure they will laugh at, ball up, and throw in the trash).

The problem? Mandatory online activation enforced by SecuROM.

You know, you don't have it as bad as it could. I also love GTA. I wanted to buy GTA4 the day it was out. I also happen to have quite a few games on Steam (mostly for convenience reasons), so I was going to buy it there. I lived through the bombardment by "X days left" ads, when finally, on the day of release, I run Steam, get that huge, almost full-screen ad offering to buy me GTA4, click it to get to the game page, and... wait... where the fuck is the "Buy" button? The screenshots are there, I can watch two trailers, see the 93 Metacritic rating... but I can't buy. WTF?

Turns out the publisher had decided that this is going to be a restricted release. I'm in Russia, so it's off-limits for me. In fact, apparently, most of the world has the same problems - people have complained about this very issue from Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. No idea about EU, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not available there either. Of course, the ads were still shown to everyone - doubly annoying.

Why would they do that? Well, they're saying that they will release the game to other markets eventually. But guess what? I'm not going to buy it anymore. The only thing I'm waiting for now is a proper scene release to appear on the Pirate Bay. And no, I will not pay for it afterwards even once they will let me. You don't want to sell to me? alright, I'll find a better place to get it from; free market, heh!

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[Uberbah]

I hate to beat the dead horse of debate, but this really is just one more nail in the coffin of PC gaming.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but self-important console fanboys have been talking about the death of PC gaming as long as there have been consoles. I have news for you buddy: a bad PC game is just a bad PC game, just as a bad console game is a bad console game.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[raz0]

I had the exact same feeling of disappointment as you, and also the exact same concerns regarding the required activation. I applaud you for spending the time to write a real physical letter to Rockstar. Hopefully it will have an impact, especially if more people do this. Personally I wrote (among other - I collected about every Rockstar e-mail I could find) to mouthoff@rockstagames.com about my concerns, and I would suggest others do the same if they feel the same way.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Warden doesn't even stay in memory when you CLOSE World of Warcraft.

Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Online requirement in an MMO is a no-brainer. The game is online. Duh.

Online requirement in a single-player game? They can go fuck themselves before I buy into those.

(Mass Effect is the main personal culprit. I'd have bought it if it didn't have that shit in it.)

PS is a slow POS

[cheekyboy]

PS2 is hardly a 2ghz monster, its a slow year 2000 POS, hell, my mobile phone runs at higher mhz.

But yeah, if each system is identical, then its no issue using assembly, or even asm macros, or C based good code, rarely you really need asm as C it self is good enough, unless you can achieve 2x speed based on mem speed alone.

But even then its only a few critical setup functions or calc functions that need to be in asm, most of the code doesnt need that level of optimizations.

1. do it all in C
2. profile it and find the slow bits.
3. try asm versions and compare against C funcs.
4. if gain is 2%, who gives a crap.

Anyway, arent most 3d games identical, just different maps and reactions?

Again, you do no ASM, you buy an engine such as renderware, and pay your 500k.

Your phone outperforms a PS2?

[Nick Ives]

Just because your phone runs at a higher clock speed doesn't mean it's more powerful than a PS2. No phone, not even an N96 or an iPhone, is currently more powerful than a PS2, though no doubt they'll get there within a couple of years.

The PS2 is a weird system, I'd recommend reading this technical overview of the Emotion Engine. There's also a link in there to another Ars article comparing the PS2 to PC style platforms.

I think that article shows why Sony thought the Cell was a good idea for the PS3. The PS2 gets most of its power from two vector units so having a PPC core linked with seven directly programmable vector units (one of the two VUs in the EE was linked into the geometry unit) probably seemed like a natural progression.

Re:Your phone outperforms a PS2?

[drinkypoo]

I think that article shows why Sony thought the Cell was a good idea for the PS3.

I think that article shows that Sony is fucking insane. Well, we're both anthropomorphizing them, aren't we? Seriously though, the PS2 was a success in spite of its special processors, not because of them. The PS3 is a success in the same way, in spite of most of Sony's decisions and mostly because of marketing.

Most developers never really got to know the PS2 and it shows; although it is roughly as powerful as the Xbox, maybe more powerful even, most games look better and run smoother on the Xbox, and I'm not just talking about the plethora of lackluster PC ports either. The only developers who can really have been said to have understood the system either worked inside of Sony or closely with sony (e.g. Polyphony.)

Sony's decision to use a wonky processor for the PS3 was just as rational as their decision to use one for the PS2, which is to say, totally bonkers. Unless of course, the technology was actually developed for some other purpose (military?) and was repurposed in order to save money (and face?)

Some game developers are stubborn

[unrealmp3]

What the hell don't they understand that oppresive DRM is not the solution to piracy? Seriously, I would pirate it if I wanted to play, but that would give them more ammo to increase the invasion of DRM, so I will just pass and play something else. Steam is a nice trade-off for DRM. At least, the user benefits from automatic/user-friendly updates, and an evolving community around it. I'm actually buying games, so don't think I'm supporting piracy. http://steamcommunity.com/id/m-p-3/games

Crysis on what settings?

[Nick Ives]

Seriously, you say Crysis in benchmarks averages about 35 on the same hardware but I guarantee you, owning the same CPU and gfx card (actually a 9800 but it's exactly the same, Nvidia just changed the number!) that you can't run Crysis at High/1680x1050 and get 35fps.

Crysis benchmarks are all flawed. It's incredible the number of sites that just use the included benchmark runs even though Crytek go to pains to point out that their benchmarks don't indicate actual game performance, they should only be used to judge relative GPU performance.

For the record, you can get 35fps avg / 30fps min at 1366x768, all high settings w/2x AA (AA is almost free so may as well use it) on your hardware. I can't remember what the 1680x1050 average is but the min can go as low as 15.

Re:Crysis on what settings?

[mobby_6kl]

So are the Crysis benchmarks flawed or is it not possible to get the performance I claim? I don't see how it could be the latter, since I never specified the exact settings I'm using, you just assumed High Q. at 1680x1050. That might have been a little dishonest of me, but I'm not writing a research paper here, and in any case I'm fairly certain that that's about (read +/- a few fps) what I got in the benchmarks. And if it's the former, then yeah that's possible, but I never claimed otherwise.

As for your second post, I think you're a little confused. The whole post was about Bully, another Rockstar game. I was using it to show why I'm not surprised that GTA4 is such a shitty port. For the record, Bully was released on 25 October 2006 for PS2, and 24 October 2008 for PC. Two years.

Also: It took 8months to port, not 2yrs

[Nick Ives]

I appreciate this game has major issues but there's no need to exaggerate, it makes your other points seem invalid.

FUCK YOU ROCKSTAR GAMES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your games are no longer 'buy it now' quality.

I got my refund. And ya know. I don't even feel like pirating it. Thats some damm fine copy protection! Make the game so much steaming shit that nobody wants it at all!

Good job! You lost a customer for life!

drm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an expert, nor a hard-core gamer. But now and then, when I don't have anything better to do, I like to look at how some new game looks like. So I download it, get a crack, play for some minutes and delete it. Until now, it *never* happened not be able to find a crack (of course, except things like WOW and that doesn't have anything to do with DRM).

Do you know of any games, except the online ones, for which there isn't a crack you can't find in 5-10 minutes?

Re:drm

[Anonymous Coward]

The game was released Dec 3'rd in stores

A fully working easy to use and widely available crack is all over the place.

Its now Dec 5'th. That's to too shabby.

Rockstar? More like ... Cockstar!

[Alari]

I watched a friend play GTA4 for over 30 minutes, so I'm good on buying it, thanks anyway. I mean, I've pretty much seen everything there IS to see already. If I get in the mood I'll probably just load up Vice City, it's more or less the same.

Even without the bugs and DRM, I'd have waited as long to buy it for PC as they waited between XBOX and PC releases. Fair is fair right? ;)

Re:Rockstar? More like ... Cockstar!

[Kneo24]

I've actually always found Rockstar's PC ports to be lacking and haven't bought one in a long time. I've been referring to them as "Cockstar" for years myself. When they can actually make a decent PC port or a non-shitty engine, I'll think about purchasing another one of their games.

Welcome to the club.

[jafo]

I stood in line with a couple of friends to buy the PS3 release at midnight when it came out. As one of the lucky first-gen PS3 owners, I haven't been able to play more than 30 minutes into the game without it locking up. One of the two other friends I was in line with had exactly the same problem, and it was widely reported with no fix.

So, I feel your pain...

Sean

Re:Welcome to the club.

[schnell]

I had the same problem you and your friend did, and it completely ruined my early playing experience (I set the game down in disgust and didn't get back into it for two months). But there are fixes for the glitch (at least for most people). Usually a combination of deleting save data and/or applying the 1.01 patch does the trick (it did for me). See more here:

GTA & Steam

[WizardofCOR]

Won't bother with either. HL2 gave proof of concept with Steam, and after the 3hrs it took just to initially unlock/load the game, plus the 4hrs it took to finish HL2, I promptly uninstalled both HL2 and Steam. I've never played anything else that will use it. Steam will not be allowed to reside, nor upload unsolicited ads/software onto my PC, thanks.
As far as GTA goes, I'm honestly laughing at this - for I've always despised the entire series. No storyline, mediocre graphics (at best), and a very poor ethical premise. So GTA and Steam are kind of a match made in heaven, IMHO - I only hope that both Rockstar and Steam eventually just 'go away', and fade into nothingness like Kingpin did...

Re:GTA & Steam

[Kneo24]

If it took you 4 hours to go through HL2 for the first time, you clearly played the game way too fast. Story driven games are not meant to be played fast, but are meant to be played in a way where you can absorb the atmosphere as you play. Rushing through a game doesn't allow you to do that at all.

Now if you're talking about episode 1 or episode 2, yeah sure, those adventures are shorter and you can probably do what I described above with them in that amount of time...

Re:GTA & Steam

[Anonymous Coward]

I only hope that both Rockstar and Steam eventually just 'go away', and fade into nothingness like Kingpin did...

I'm trying to picture someone sitting in their parents' basement, afraid of the outside world around them, completely and wholly convinced that a content system that millions of players use regularly, hosting hundreds of games and tons of content will just "go away" if they simply hope hard enough.

And as far as that goes, I'm honestly laughing at it.

PC Games need to step it up !!!

[Zengrath]

I'm an avid PC gamer myself, and have spent most of my life in front of the PC, and yet it still took me 2 nights after work to get GTAIV running fine on my computer. and i just built my computer recently! can play farcry2 maxed out, Grid maxed out, Crysis on fairly high settings. blah blah. I had every bug that everyone else had in GTA IV. Sound muffled, graphics problems with not being able to see anything but lights. etc. But i finally got it all working after completely cleaning drivers out and installing the latest beta drivers, etc. There is no way anyone in my family, the ones who are big console fans would have ever gotten this game working. and sad thing is.. a lot of games i buy lately are difficult to get working properly too.. Just ridiculous the amount of effort it takes, and normally by the time i do get in and running, I'm too frustrated to enjoy the game. And yet i live on the PC!! These company's seriously need to step it up and start releasing games that you can actually play before adding more features, etc. Or else they will continue to loose pc gamers to the console crowd. and being a major pc guy myself it saddens me to see less and less pc guys at all anymore. I don't know hardly anyone in real life anymore that is into pc games like i am... PS. Why is it when i "Preview" this post it combines my paragraphs into one mess??

Re:PC Games need to step it up !!!

[cliffski]

I agree. devs need to be less obsessive about always using all the very latest features in every graphics API. Leave that bleeding edge hell to the guys doing the unreal and quake engines. I only make 2D games, but even then, I stick to directx7. Directx7 WORKS. EVERYONE has drivers for it, and its reliable.
People seem more concerned that they MUST have HDR lighting in their game because the other guy had it, than they do about making the game engine stable, and consistently fast on low end PCs.
Bah

It's an OUTRAGE!@!!!

[mujadaddy]

I killed this hooker I payed $100, and I only found $68 on her!!!

ROCKSTAR, FIX YOUR SHIT!

wahey!

[Anonymous Coward]

arent consoles just a great little piece of the turdspurting capitalist control-freak wanker mindset - i have never and will never own one.

though it might not mean anything to them, theyve just lost my 25 quid and the future interest of 1 consumer.

sometimes i wonder why i bother caring...

I'm not surprised at all

[chosen_my_foot]

I played GTA3 and Vice City on PC and never got the PS2 versions. My goal was to get better graphics. I've played on 3 different video cards over the years, and never played through either game without severe glitches. In GTA3, if I didn't turn some of the effects off, the draw distance would get wonky. Parts of the road just a few yards ahead of me would be completely invisible, and the whole game looked hazy. In Vice City, if I turned the frame limiter off the game ran smooth as silk but forgot to render a lot of things. It sucks when you hit invisible walls. Large portions of buildings weren't there. Turning the frame limiter on made the game run at an awful 30 FPS and generally reduced the fidelity of the graphics, but at least everything rendered. When I asked around on the internet, responses were mixed between "SHUT UP THE GAME IS AWESOME" and "Buy the PS2 version." A few people chimed in that they had problems, and that all in all there were no solutions and it seemed like the PC ports were just cash grabs. So I'm not really surprised that the PC port of GTA IV has problems.

The PS3 version was a port, and it did take longer

[StreetStealth]

Rockstar only delayed release on the consoles because it had to release the two concurrently.

And, while the game is plenty enjoyable on the PS3, the performance is still a bit behind the 360. You'll see lower framerates in big chases, and the whole thing's already running at a lower resolution than native 720p.

Consoles better for games.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where consoles pull ahead of PC when it comes to gaming in general. You don't have the DRM and performance issues that PC's are plagued with, your not required to go download a no-cd crack or a scene release just to have a copy of the game you bought without securom or some form of DRM (or run a securom uninstaller for that matter). This is why i own a PS3 and a 360, I can play all the games i want, the hottest releases without any problems. The only games i play on PC are Crysis, Farcry 2 and Red Alert and S.T.A.L.K.E.R and obviously anything Half-Life related, PC games have gotten pretty crappy over the years (other than the ones Valve and Crytek develop). Then to top it off they cant stretch out PC hardware like console hardware??? How can they make a console last 7 years on its fixed hardware, yes when it comes to games, they keep pushing for more and more and more so that your hardware doesn't even last a year and a half, its pointless, PC gaming used to be different, but now its a new directX version every 6 months it seems (10, 10.1, what next? 10.2 then 11 and 11.1???) each requiring a new video card, why doesn't Microsoft just release the specs for all directX versions up until like DirectX 20 so the video card manufacturers can build their cards up on 1 uber-architecture and leave it at that for a good 5-6 years, only releaseing enhanced and more powerful products based upon that without needing to revise for a new version of DirectX micrsoft decides to pull out of its asshat.

All repeat after me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Class...Action...Suit...

Because that is what is going to happen to Valve for taking my legitimate possession away (I own a steam account, with another legally bought game).

"Grand Theft Gamers Money"

[P00k13]

Bought our game?... HAHA, You just got robbed!!! But hey, at least we didn't shoot you or beat you with a golf club.

Re:"Grand Theft Gamers Money"

[Siridar]

See, I read that as "beat you off with a golf club"...certainly a "wait, what?" moment...

Kick me sign

[Weaselmancer]

R* has been making a big deal out of how "uncrackable" their DRM is.

This is the geek equivalent of "kick me". I love the pure hubris of it. As soon as you say this, hordes of teenagers in the Netherlands begin salivating and firing up their decompilers.

I'll say it again with the hopes that someone at R* who has a clue reads this:

"If at any time you are holding both the encrypted content and the decryption keys, no matter how cleverly you hide that fact - a crack is always possible."

Not so sure about that

[Weaselmancer]

I think the last thing any gamer wants is to discourage Rockstar from making more GTA games!

Well, maybe. I know of two people who have GTA4 for the Xbox. Neither one likes it. They took the fun bits out and replace it with realism is the complaint I hear.

San Andreas had a lot of silly crap in it, but IMHO that's what defined the series. Jetpacks in a secret military base, climbing on board a Navy carrier and somehow being able to kill everyone and steal a Harrier, falling off a motorcycle at 200mph and being ok, beating someone to death with a dildo while wearing a gimp suit - that sort of stuff. Things that definitely say "yeah, you're in a videogame". Goofy fun.

GTA4, by all accounts is missing this.

Incorrect statements on the Xbox OS

[Ralish]

Your points on the difficulty of porting games from the Xbox 360 to the PC versus Xbox to PC are valid, but your statements on the Xbox OS are just downright wrong.

The Xbox 360 is not based off of early versions of Windows NT in any way, shape, or form. The last version of NT to support the PowerPC architecture was NT 4.0, and the support it had was cut prematurely, long before the x86 and Alpha versions of NT 4.0 ended their lifecycle (sometime after SP3 but before SP4 for memory, the final SP for NT 4.0 x86 was SP6a).

Keeping in mind that despite being a gaming console, the OS needs to support many advanced OS features that NT 4.0 never supported, it's not only wrong, but doesn't make sense. For example, the Xbox 360 uses the DirectX 9.0c API, NT 4.0 had a crippled version of DirectX 3.0 (yes, seriously). That, and you'd be looking at other things like solid support for multi-core processors (the hardware is a tri-core PPC), which isn't identical to SMP support.

In actual fact, the Xbox OS was built from the ground up. It shares numerous design concepts with NT, much of the same nomenclature, but the OS itself is designed from the ground-up specifically for gaming, with anything not pertinent to gaming not included.

I highly recommend this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2006/02/17/534421.aspx

Best topic in the forum

[Cocoa Radix]

One of the first topics in the forum that caught my eye was this one. If you don't feel like clicking out, the OP reads:

The fanbois with quad-cores are bragging about the 50+ fps the benchmark utility gives them. However they are refusing to acknowledge that the fps sinks like the titanic whenever there is substantial action on-screen. Feel free to refute me with a youtube video that clearly shows your FPS. YOU CANNOT. The benchmark utility is useless and gives NO indication of real performance. Why don't you backup your statements with a video?

It took until page eight before someone posted a series of videos that appeared to be convincing. Before that it was seven pages of people posting screenshots and claiming that it proved their steady FPS. I find the general rage there to be hilarious, but at the same time, I'm very understanding, because nobody expects a major company to botch a release that badly. Kudos to Steam for offering refunds.

Sounds familiar.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember what happened with GTAIII for the PC? Same exact crap.

Rockstar, you guys really need to overhaul your PC QA department.

Re: Going back to the IBM 360

[Douglas Goodall]

I seem to remember that when a 360 program crashed, a dump would be printed that gurus could read. Something like register 15 always pointed to the calling function so you could trace back as far as necessary through all the call levels. Later when the standard Unix execution environment was created, it looked very similar and that is why contemporary debuggers can work so well. In the days of hand coded assembly code (back when 640K was enough for anyone) we did without stack frames because code could be so much more compact without them. Now that we have essentially unlimited memory (gigabytes of ram), having stack frames to support debugging as well as automatic variables is practical. Around the time of the 286 protected mode, the addressing modes of x86 started looking very IBMish. Of course that was also about the time optimized C compilers started generating code that was competitive to hand written assembly (in most cases). Of course there are still moments when key routines win being hand coded, graphics being my favorite.

Re: Stand back and squint

[Douglas Goodall]

I believe from the days of supercalc and excel, if you stand back ten feet and squint, and it looks the same, it is considered the same. For the purposes of the court that is. Back at Digital Research I remember someone showing me a Mac and saying, "That is what we want GEM to be like". At least they were honest.

Re: Install limits just kill me

[Douglas Goodall]

I don't know about everyone else but my machines crash now and then and need to be reloaded. I bought a software package (wordsearch8formac) the other day. I loaded it using an admin id so the privs would be high enough. Then it wouldn't run when I logged in non-admin. So I tried to reinstall on my non-admin account and hit the install limit. I emailed the company and they ignored my request to reset my install count. Back goes the software. I am getting really sore about the companies punishing the paying users with DRM to prevent piracy. I buy software so I can get support. Also I am a developer so I don't want to pirate any more than I want my software pirated. Given that real paying users need to reload software as needed, this install limit thing just doesn't work at all.

Re: paragraph tags help

[Douglas Goodall]

When you want a paragraph break, put in a less than p more than tag and that will do the trick. HTML you know...

Re: It is a little worse than that

[Douglas Goodall]

I get that advanced graphics mean pushing the horsepower onto the GPU. I understood when 16 bit ISA cards were better. Then I understood when PCI cards were better. Then I understood when AGP cards were better. Then I understood when PCI express cards were better. Now I have to buy another computer again because PCI express 2 cards are better. It is not just a matter of Direct X specifications. Pushing the envelope makes it very expensive to keep up. I get it. I want the ultimate NVIDIA card with a GPU that has 4096 CUDA cores and 64GB of video ram. Can't we just go there now and get this over with. All this upgrading is making me tired. These electrical standards are boring. We need to start interfacing to peripherals via light instead of electricity. All cables need to be fibre. Oh yea, that's not good enough, then comes quantum ... SCQI (small computer quantum interface). The landfills of our world are filling up with hardware that won't quite run our games.