PC Gaming 'a Generation Ahead' of Consoles, Says Crytek Boss

Crytek co-founder Cevat Yerli spoke recently about the growing gap between modern PCs and consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360, saying that the desire to develop for multiple platforms is hampering creative expression. "PC is easily a generation ahead right now. With 360 and PS3, we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is. You won't be able to squeeze more juice from these rocks." One reason this trend persists is because of the perception that PC game sales are not high enough for most developers to focus on that platform. Rock, Paper, Shotgun says this indicates a need for the disclosure of digital distribution sales numbers, which could dispel that myth. Yerli's comments come alongside news of Crytek's announcement of a new military-based shooter called Warface.

Comments

Don't blame the platform

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Before you start saying that these consoles are essentially tapped out, keep in mind that the PS3 isn't near its full potential yet.

PS3 still not maxed out - Andrew House (SCEE President)
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=248275

PS3 hard to develop for on purpose - Kazuo Hirai (SCEE Chairman)
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=248275

Now, when you've finally "tapped out this rock", then come back and complain. Until then, blame yourselves for your inability to develop good games that take full advantage of these platforms.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Jartan]

The PS3 might not be "maxed out" in terms of software existing which uses it's good points. It's pretty clear though that it's maxed out in terms of what the gaming market is ever going to do with it. The reality is that Sony tried to go a new direction with hardware but they failed to get the market stranglehold they needed to force developers to take risks on new coding styles for a platform specific title.

Either way the original point that the PC has far surpassed the PS3 is still true. The PS3 has way too much power in certain area's that aren't necessary. In area's like GPU and memory though it's pathetic. It was in many ways far subpar to PC's the day it was released.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Movi]

Actually it's not a new direction at all. If anything, the PS2 was the new direction. Stick very high speed vector processors next to the a standard CPU and GPU and some low latency ram on a high speed interconnect. The PS3 is just this idea extended to more vector units and current-generation CPU and GPU (at the time it was made).

What Microsoft did was smart - instead on banking on very specialized hardware, it made sure it's development kit could do the optimisation automatically, hence it's MUCH easier to push the xbox to it's limits than the PS3 (read about the ATi shader compiler for R600, and how cool Visual Studio for the Xbox is).

Re:Don't blame the platform

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm guessing that we should just take the president and chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, a couple of non-techie suits with a nontrivial stake in saying nice things about their product, at their word when they assure us that the PS3 will achieve photorealistic graphics and save the whales, if only those lazy developers would do it right? Isn't this the same Sony whose PS2 "Emotion engine" was supposed to have been delivering cinematic graphics, according to their marketdroids?

Re:Don't blame the platform

[edxwelch]

Sure, the CPU potential of the PS3 hasn't been reached yet, however this is largely irrelevent since games are mainly bound by the GPU performance. The PS3 GPU is a generation behind the PC.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[PopeRatzo]

The PS3 has way too much power in certain area's that aren't necessary. In area's like GPU and memory though it's pathetic.

For me, the biggest weakness of all consoles is the controller. PS3 and XBox controllers force game developers toward silly simplifying moves like the abominable "third person shooter". I guess if you're into puppetry it might be fun, but if you're looking for anything like an immersive experience, third person shooters aren't going to get you there. No matter what you do, you're looking over the shoulder of a character who, for some reason, doesn't seem to understand that sometimes you want to jump over the box and sometimes you want to use it as cover.

I wouldn't mind so much if the net effect of the ubiquity of consoles was just that it slowed the development of graphics for PC games, but it's done something much much worse: it's forced PC games to adopt horrible control mechanics and idiotic point of view, and for no better reason than the limitation of the console controller.

It amazes me that decades in to see how clumsy console controllers are. That's not to say that it's impossible to get somewhat used to a console controller, but even when you've mastered them, it's still an ergonomic nightmare. In online gaming with PCs, you can always tell when someone's using a console controller. Not that they're going to be necessarily worse than someone who's using a keyboard and mouse, but there are certain tell-tale signs.

And the "alternative" controller schemes, like the Wii and even the Kinect are still completely unable to control fine movements. If you want to swing a bat or a sword, you can use a Wii, but if you want to strafe while picking off the enemy from a crouched position and switching to a different weapon or reloading, good luck. I'm interested in seeing where the Kinect will go, but until they make Kinect controllers for my PC, I'll never know. I did my best to warm up to a PS3 for more than a year, but finally (about the time MW2 came out) I finally just gave up and went back to PC gaming. The fact that Sony continues to be hostile to its customers was no small part of that decision.

The best thing that can happen to PC gaming, in my opinion, is for simple hacks for the PS3 and XBox to become readily available so games can easily be copied and shared. Personally, I'm surprised that so many console gamers have chosen to accept punishment so readily for PC gamers' filesharing. Especially since there's very little evidence that filesharing has in fact hurt PC game developers.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Zironic]

I don't see first person shooters as immersive at all. I feel like I'm playing a floating camera with a gun attached. I prefer third person shooters for a number of reasons, 1) They don't give me dizziness and headache from the camera movement 2) They give me a much better idea of the relative position of my character compared to everything else, and doesn't make it feel like the character is floating when he climbs ladders or whatnot 3) They allow the character to have much better movements as you can see in more then one direction 4) They allow you to have more game-play mechanics like interesting melee combat.

Third person shooters can also be made competently with PC controls in mind, for instance Global Agenda is a great Team Fortressish shooter that's third person and designed for PC and I find it much nicer to play then Team Fortress 2.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Khyber]

Yea, sorry, the rock is tapped out. My LAPTOP alone has roughly double (triple if I count both GPUs in SLI) the TFLOPS power of the PS3 and much more powerful hardware, and many games are STILL put to task, so much that devs don't bother releasing them for the PS3 or 360, because they'd NEVER work on such limited hardware, unless the game devs ditched the entire SDK and built everything from scratch and in pure machine code SPECIFICALLY for the system.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Khyber]

Um, no, it's easier to push the 360 to it's limit because it has HALF the power of the PS3, not to mention inferior hardware interconnects and speeds.

360: 1TFLOP, GPU included.

PS3: 2TFLOP, GPU included.

Good try, though.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Khyber]

"Isn't this the same Sony whose PS2 "Emotion engine" was supposed to have been delivering cinematic graphics, according to their marketdroids?"

And it most certainly did if you bothered to play anything beyond the garbage-port FPS games brought to the PS2.

Want me to start rolling through the 300+ PS2 games I own and find the ones with cinematic (better than then-current PCs) graphics? It could be easily done and I can think of a few right off the top of my head - FFX, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, FFXII, want me to keep going?

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Khyber]

More like 4 generations behind. The PS3 ran what amounted to a modified GeForce 7800GTX.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[The End Of Days]

360: games as good as PS3

PS3: games as good as 360

so that basically got Sony... nothing. Third place. A tight third place, but third place nonetheless.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[BenoitRen]

Have you ever considered that it depends on taste and/or habits? The console controllers are horrible to you because you've gotten used to the keyboard and mouse combo. Personally I far prefer a console controller as as a keyboard and mouse combo feels so unnatural to use for any kind of gaming that's not a real-time strategy game.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[BenoitRen]

The cinematic graphics are pretty much all cut-scenes. Good luck finding real-time cinematic graphics.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[teh kurisu]

A keyboard and mouse will always be better than a controller for FPS games, and a steering wheel will always be better for racing games, yes, we know. And light gun games will always work better with a bloody light gun.

No console designer in their right mind would make any of these the default controller for their console, because they are all poor all-rounder controllers compared to the ones that come bundled with consoles right now.

Consoles have had USB ports since the PS2, and you can use a keyboard and mouse with them if you want. The Dreamcast had keyboard and mouse accessories that IIRC worked with the DC version of Quake 3. The original PlayStation even had a mouse for Command and Conquer. Nobody used or uses them, because using a keyboard and mouse in your living room is a pain in the arse.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[suzerain]

Figured I'd add onto this...the problem with first-person shooters, for me (or, say...in the F1 racing game where you can have a "looking out the windshield" view vs. a view from behind the car), is that in first-person shooters, you're in a tunnel with no peripheral vision.

In real life, if I was sneaking around with a gun trying to shoot people, I'd be relying on my peripheral vision as much or more than my direct vision. This is why I, too, prefer the third-person view, because at least it opens up the field of view a bit.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[ultranova]

Before you start saying that these consoles are essentially tapped out, keep in mind that the PS3 isn't near its full potential yet.

According to Sony. Gee, I wonder if they might have a bit of a bias?

PS3 hard to develop for on purpose - Kazuo Hirai (SCEE Chairman)

Yes... you need a different coding style than with other platforms to get everything out of it. Which means that even if some development studio was willing to limit themselves to PS3 sales, they'd be hard pressed to find programmers who can make use of it.

Sony took a gamble and lost.

Now, when you've finally "tapped out this rock", then come back and complain. Until then, blame yourselves for your inability to develop good games that take full advantage of these platforms.

The platforms are tapped out, as far as economically sensible development goes. PCs, on the other hand, keep on getting more powerful, so the sweet point of most bang for your buck keeps increasing as well.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[CronoCloud]

I wouldn't say "nobody" used the PSone mouse (I have one, but it's gone missing), or hooked up a mouse and keyboard to their PS2 (yep, even when outside of Linux) or PS3 (yes, even in GameOS when I had Linux installed on it.). What pisses me off is that the PS2 port of Half-Life has keyboard and mouse support (I don't use the keyboard, but I do use mouse aiming to go with my analog movement), but the PS3 version of the Orange Box doesn't support it.

Keyboard for text entry IS supported in any game that uses the PS3's standard text entry widget, a good example of that is Oblivion, where you can use the keyboard to name custom spells and enchanted items.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Ash Vince]

1) They don't give me dizziness and headache from the camera movement

It's called motion sickness, and if a game gives you that then it must be pretty immersive.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[PopeRatzo]

It doesn't have to be a "keyboard and mouse" but the standard controller that comes with the PS3 and XBox is old and clumsy. They've kept those controllers only because that's what they've always been using. It's time to come up with something a lot better, and I don't think the Wii controller or the Kinect is the answer.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[TheThiefMaster]

The majority of developers are going to make their games cross-platform to maximize sales. Without anything to differentiate it, the PS3 and 360 just get the same games (with a very limited number of exclusives).

That said, speaking as a developer for both platforms, you're massively overstating the performance of both consoles there. The PS3 has around 200 GFLOPS of cpu performance, the 360 has around 100. Theoretically, if every single CPU instruction is a multiply-add (hahahahaha). In practice, the PS3 is very hard to program for because you have to shift everything to SPU programs to get any performance out of it at all, and the 360 will run ordinary multi-threaded code, so it evens out. Graphics-wise, the PS3 has around 200 GFLOPS of shader power (note that this only totals 400 GFLOPS, not 2 TFLOPS. Sony did a slide claiming 2 TFLOPS once, they were including texture samplers or something, not only programmable FLOPS), and the 360 has about 240 GFLOPS of shader power.
Overall that's 400 GFLOPS for PS3 and 340 GFLOPS for 360. They're actually quite close.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[adonoman]

...if a game gives you that then it must be pretty immersive.

Not really - Descent from 1995 was notorious for giving people motion sickness, and looking at a blocky 640x480 14" screen can hardly be called immersive.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Khyber]

Umm, every game mentioned renders everything in the game engine. Try again. Even Metroid on the GC did this.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm definitely not going to say the slightest ill about the art direction of some of PS2 titles, and some of them, particularly later in the console's life, looked pretty good given the hardware constraints that they were dealing with(though, on the other side of the coin, having your output device be the 640x480-with-a-following-wind of a period SDTV certainly papers over a few ills...)

That said, though, virtually any present-generation PC game that isn't a 2-minute port from some console, and some that are, will have some questionable art direction; but its ability to paint a drop-dead-stunning rendering of whatever generic Modern Warfare N+1 shooter schlock is being considered across one or more high resolution displays simply cannot be disputed.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Your.Master]

That doesn't follow. People who get motion sickness from an FPS also frequently get motion sickness from TV and movies done with a shake camera. Remember all the people throwing up during the Blair Witch Project? Being as immersive as watching TV, isn't very immersive at all for a video game.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[FunkSoulBrother]

There are keyboard and mouse that can be plugged into a Xbox 360? Please tell me this is true -- I don't care about graphics, but I need my K+M controls for shooter games.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Khyber]

Only in the cutscenes loaded before you started the game or changed major point in storyline. Everything else (AKA 95%) was real-time rendered.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[quantumphaze]

That happens to my mother when I used to play Doom just by looking at me play

Re:Don't blame the platform

[sixsixtysix]

i'd say that items 1-3 are part of the immersion that you fail to see

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Zironic]

You could argue that, however to me a number of crucial elements will always be missing from FPS games that will prevent them from ever being 'immersive' to me.
1) They make you feel like you're in a floating camera, when they try to compensate for the fact humans have limbs, they feel like a bouncing floating camera
2) IRL I have peripheral vision as well as the ability to turn my head, being unable to do this is a deal breaker for my immersion
3) IRL I have a functioning sense of balance and a functioning spatial sense, in FPS I don't. It completely breaks immersion when you get lost in the silliest spaces or just randomly walk off ledges (or fall instead of using the ladder, wtf?)

Re:Don't blame the platform

[Samfer]

You should check out Operation Reality if you want military style shooter immersion. They also leave the ability to use third person view.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[shemp42]

I totally agree with you. Just look at Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. The requirements state that you should have an Xbox360 controller for your PC, to play it. WTF!!! I have a $300 G27 wheel why would I use and XBOX360 controller. And the game is made for the controller. Its just a shitty console port. I got a refund it was sooo bad. But this is what we are seeing more and more of. games developed for the console and then ported over to PC.

Re:Don't blame the platform

[PopeRatzo]

Its just a shitty console port.

Man, is it ever. I'm so disappointed at what Criterion Games came up with after the excellent Burnout Paradise.

What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[aristotle-dude]

Just look at the newest games and how badly they perform on supposedly "powerful" machines. These games are not more creative, just flashy and poorly coded.

Take the Rage game on iOS for instance, it rivals some console graphics but is not running on powerful hardware. It has to run on a machine with less than 512 Mb devoted to the game and no access to Virtual memory. PC games are written by people who could not code on embedded machines if their life depended on it. Sloppy code.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[tepples]

PC games are written by people who could not code on embedded machines if their life depended on it.

You mean some PC games are written by sloppy coders. Some other PC games are written by people with experience coding for 8-bit microprocessors. Still others are written by people who specialize in PC only due to console makers' institutionalized discrimination against small businesses.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[interkin3tic]

That's at least partially an artificial problem with the games, not the PCs. For one thing, it seems like half the developers half-ass the PC version intentionally, since they have less control than on consoles. For another, the PC market is smaller and less of a concern.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[sznupi]

Also, where are those Kinect and Wiimote enabled games?

Generally - really, which one is it? "The games I play - PC games - are...deep, man" or "shiny!!!"?

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Cinder6]

I've long thought the ability to issue patches is the reason PC games have a lot more issues than their counterparts. Unfortunately, this generation has added that capability to consoles, as well. In theory, it's a good thing; issues that come up can be fixed without going through ridiculous rigmarole (just look at the Metroid thing with Nintendo). In practice, it means developers get to release buggy products. Just look at Fallout: New Vegas. It was basically unplayable on the consoles and little better on the PC. The massive patch that came out (how big was it again? 500MB?) fixed a lot of things, but there's still lots of stupid bugs.

As games become more complex, there are more areas for problems to occur, but it's pretty tacky to release something when you know it has huge bugs in it, many of them game-breaking.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Renraku]

To understand the poor coding, you must understand the game industry and the choices they make. I'll explain using analogies that everyone can understand.

Example 1: Your task is to build a house. You can make your own brick, cut your own lumber, pour your own concrete foundation using concrete that you mixed, do your own plumbing, etc. The quality of your house is based on however much time you feel like spending to do it yourself. Obviously this would take far far too long, so you opt to use materials already created. You buy all the ingredients. Obviously some may not be up to your standard, but the loss of quality is relatively low compared to the vast amount of time you will save. You've given up a little and gained a lot.

Example 2: Your task is to build a house. You have three days to do it. The previous house, using the components you purchased, took several weeks to build. Your only solution is to use modular components. AKA, bed room. Living room. Kitchen. Bathroom. Assemble with a crane, connect together on a foundation, voila. A house. The quality suffers quite a bit using this pre-built solution, but you got the job done on time. It was the only way you could do it. You gave up a lot to get the job done on time.

Example 3: Your employer now realizes you can build houses in three days, and that there's a high demand for your house building services because you did such a good job in example one. Still, your employer thinks you can build it a little faster. Two days to build the house now. They know people won't care about the quality because once they've bought it, they've paid for it. As long as it still meets the most basic definition of a house and doesn't endanger the lives of the people living in it, it's suitable for sale. Your only option is to make a house factory and simply air lift the house in once complete. You don't even have time to secure the thing to the damn foundation.

So we've gone from perfect house to shitty house that will slide off its foundation in a strong wind. This is how the game industry is. They HAVE to use shitty tools and shitty coding to slop things out the door as fast as they can, because the marketing team has promised Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and 3 to be out by February and won't even tell the developers this until January 25th. Guess what department the executives are in?

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Dunbal]

Hasn't someone told you that here on slashdot we only understand car analogies? Get out of here, and take your damned houses with you!

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[caitsith01]

Just look at the newest games and how badly they perform on supposedly "powerful" machines. These games are not more creative, just flashy and poorly coded.

Have you actually played any new games on a semi-decent machine? Apart from Crysis itself this phenomenon hasn't really been around for about 5 years. It used to be the case that a game would claim to run on (say) a 386 DX but in truth needed a 486, but those games are largely gone. My games rig is about 2 years old, and still plays anything new I throw at it very nicely. For $200 you can get a graphics card that will happily play any new game on the market.

Of course, some games offer 'ultra' graphics settings that might cause a mid-level machine to labour. But this is icing - these games look fantastic even at medium detail settings, and far surpass consoles at that level.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[aristotle-dude]

Just look at the newest games and how badly they perform on supposedly "powerful" machines. These games are not more creative, just flashy and poorly coded.

Have you actually played any new games on a semi-decent machine? Apart from Crysis itself this phenomenon hasn't really been around for about 5 years. It used to be the case that a game would claim to run on (say) a 386 DX but in truth needed a 486, but those games are largely gone. My games rig is about 2 years old, and still plays anything new I throw at it very nicely. For $200 you can get a graphics card that will happily play any new game on the market.

Of course, some games offer 'ultra' graphics settings that might cause a mid-level machine to labour. But this is icing - these games look fantastic even at medium detail settings, and far surpass consoles at that level.

Yes I have. Why should a game like like Star Craft II require a Quad-core and 2 GB of ram to play on anything higher than 1024X768 with Medium graphics setting.

The there is Civilization V. Why should there be large hardware requirements on a "turn based" game? What the heck?

Please stop calling your gaming machine a "rig". It is a gaming PC, not a truck or a professional workstation.

I am sick and tired of nerds calling their PCs rigs and referring to their IT workplaces as a windows "shop" or linux "shop". You guys are not blue collar workers and you would be laughed out of any bar that had real blue collar workers in it.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Yvan256]

Fortunately for us, Nintendo, Blizzard and Valve don't play by those rules.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Monkeedude1212]

SLASHDOT TRANSLATION:

Example 1: Your task is to build a car. You can make your own frame, cut your own windows, pour your own plastic bumpers that you mixed, do your own drivetrain, etc. The quality of your car is based on however much time you feel like spending to do it yourself. Obviously this would take far far too long, so you opt to use materials already created. You buy all the components. Obviously some may not be up to your standard, but the loss of quality is relatively low compared to the vast amount of time you will save. You've given up a little and gained a lot.

Example 2: Your task is to build a car. You have three days to do it. The previous car, using the components you purchased, took several weeks to build. Your only solution is to use modular components. AKA, Engine. Interior. Axles. Rims w/ the Rubber already on them. Assemble with a crane, connect together using screws, voila. A car. The quality suffers quite a bit using this pre-built solution, but you got the job done on time. It was the only way you could do it. You gave up a lot to get the job done on time.

Example 3: Your employer now realizes you can build cars in three days, and that there's a high demand for your car building services because you did such a good job in example one. Still, your employer thinks you can build it a little faster. Two days to build the car now. They know people won't care about the quality because once they've bought it, they've paid for it. As long as it still meets the most basic definition of a car and doesn't endanger the lives of the people driving in it, it's suitable for sale. Your only option is to make a car factory and simply ship the car in once complete. You don't even have time to test drive the thing to the 10 Kilometers.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I have. Why should a game like like Star Craft II require a Quad-core and 2 GB of ram to play on anything higher than 1024X768 with Medium graphics setting.

The there is Civilization V. Why should there be large hardware requirements on a "turn based" game? What the heck?

...

Ah, yes. Graphics is the only thing that a game must process.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[exomondo]

PC games are written by people who could not code on embedded machines if their life depended on it. Sloppy code.

So Carmack is good when he writes for embedded machines but sloppy when he writes for PCs?

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Trogre]

I hesitate to point this out, but:

Your Example 1 could describe most OSS games.
Your Example 2 could describe most commercial games.

Now go do a side-by-side comparison of the two, for any given genre.

And I say this as an OSS advocate.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Gadget_Guy]

Just look at the newest games and how badly they perform on supposedly "powerful" machines.

That is wrong. At the default (mainstream) settings virtually all games play well on the current level of gaming computers. Although I will concede that there have been some console ports that perform so poorly that you wonder whether they are running under a console emulator. But that is not representative of all PC games.

The people who complain about poor performance are those who insist on pushing all the game settings up to maximum. The reason they have the adjustable settings in PC games is for those people who spend stupid amounts of money on their systems, to extend the shelf life of the game by future-proofing it, and to make pretty screenshots to help sell the game.

People often use your argument as a reason for why console gaming is better, but that it because console games don't have the option of increasing the video settings to maximum. They are fixed at the mainstream level. And often the default mainstream settings on a PC game will still look better than the console versions.

Finally, if you decide to revisit an old game in a few years time, your console game won't age as well as a PC game because you will be able to use all the maximum settings on your upgraded PC. That comparison is assuming your PS4 or XBOX 720 will actually run the old software.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

GAH! You just described the real car industry!

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[caitsith01]

I am sick and tired of nerds calling their PCs rigs and referring to their IT workplaces as a windows "shop" or linux "shop". You guys are not blue collar workers and you would be laughed out of any bar that had real blue collar workers in it.

rig - noun - apparatus for some purpose; equipment; outfit; gear: a hi-fi rig; Bring your rod and reel and all the rest of your fishing rig.

Thank you for confirming that you have some irrational hatred of PC gaming and that your opinions on the subject are therefore irrelevant.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[harley78]

In the "old" days, programmers "half-assed" the console version not intentionally; but because they had to. PC/Mac came first. Wish/hope it would go back that way. wolf3d.exe

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[cgenman]

To be fair, developing on a PC is DAMNED HARD. To extend your analogy:

You have to build a house. You don't know what bricks you have, what materials the walls will be made of, or even the amount of space you have to put the house in. You have to build the house in such a way as to take advantage of a 512 mb lot, or an 8gb lot. The floors might be made by nVidia, ATI, or a prefab floor by intel. Each room might be bigger or smaller than you thought.

So you've gone from a console, where you know EXACTLY the dimensions, building materials, etc of the place you're building, to one where you're building an abstracted concept of a game that is supposed to build itself from available materials and still function.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Skidborg]

I see you've never head of pathfinding AI. Hundreds of units moving around, all having to figure out where they want to go over a gigantic map with different speed values for every tile of terrain. Having to do that can make almost any processing unit shake in sheer terror. Not something console FPS games have to deal with.

And go upgrade your memory you caveman.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Khyber]

What?

Metroid (gamecube,) Blackthorne (PC version,) and the the entire Orange Box on the PS3.

Those companies most certainly play by those rules. There are your cited games that had MAJOR issues upon release.

Want me to dig out more?

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Khyber]

"I see you've never head of pathfinding AI. Hundreds of units moving around, Not something console FPS games have to deal with."

WHAT? Kiss: Psycho Circus on the Dreamcast. Never heard of Lithtech? Countless enemies on screnn/in level. Tons of pathing AI to handle because some things weren't land-bound.

I think your own neolithic memory might need enhancement, or maybe some electrical shocks.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[SpazmodeusG]

I played Blackthorne start-finish back in the day. It was bug free.

Starcraft 2 would have been a much better choice for criticising Blizzard (with the bnet lobby system having no chatrooms, no clan support and a crap way of listing custom games),

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Khyber]

Blackthorne on the PC had Error #0, which resulted when the patch failed. That tended to happen quite often.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[BenoitRen]

What does this have to do with an irrational hate for PC gaming? It has more to do with hatred for the geek culture.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[BenoitRen]

The people who complain about poor performance are those who insist on pushing all the game settings up to maximum.

Not always. I have a PC that exceeds the recommended system requirements for Phantasy Star Universe, and it runs crappily on it at low settings.

Finally, if you decide to revisit an old game in a few years time, your console game won't age as well as a PC game because you will be able to use all the maximum settings on your upgraded PC. That comparison is assuming your PS4 or XBOX 720 will actually run the old software.

Not necessarily. See: PS3 playing PS2 games upscaled to HD.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Gadget_Guy]

I have a PC that exceeds the recommended system requirements for Phantasy Star Universe, and it runs crappily on it at low settings.

Seriously? The recommended specs called for a 2.6GHz Pentium 4. I'm surprised that you would have problems with something from 2006. Perhaps it is a networking issue. Or maybe it belongs in my category of poorly performing console ports to which I referred in my previous post.

PS3 playing PS2 games upscaled to HD.

Ah yes, I had forgotten about that since I don't own a PS3. Does it make a noticable difference? Do the textures get higher resolution or something?

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[Xamataca]

I think your own neolithic memory might need enhancement, or maybe some electrical shocks.

May I recommend an exquisite lobotomy or, even better, a "délicieux" trepanation?

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[CronoCloud]

Yes. Ever play the PSone version of Civ II? Great game, except for a few little issues: No PSone mouse support, and the further you go into the game with more units, cities, etc...the slower the AI turns get. That 33MHz R3000A in the PSone just isn't quite powerful enough.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[thegarbz]

Funny the only games I have played recently that have performance problems by any normal measure on my modest system are games which are cross developed for various platforms. Games like Dead-Rising 2 played like a bucket of shit for no apparent reason. I would put that down not to poor coding on the PC, but rather poor porting of a console game.

You see that more and more these days. Games are written for consoles. Then some wiseguy thinks hey it's basically all DirectX let just change a bunch of compile commands and release it for PC. The worst examples of this are PC games which ask me to press the red button. No effort is put into porting games properly these days, and that's why they run like shit.

Despite what you may think an embedded device does not have 512MB of RAM, and about the only workarounds that Rage required was a fancy way of loading textures, otherwise it was written by frigging ID software, you know a company that releases computer game engines!

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[tehcyder]

What does this have to do with an irrational hate for PC gaming? It has more to do with hatred for the geek culture.

I believe it's called trolling. I can't see any other reason to post an "I hate nerds" comment on a self-proclaimed geek site.

People who post "I love killing puppies" messages on a dog-lovers forum are trolls, pure and simple.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[del_diablo]

Hmmm, I think I partially agree. Except that on FLOSS at times people attempt to do the entire job, and then fail megahard.

Re:What a load of garbage. Games on PCs are crap.

[BenoitRen]

Seriously? The recommended specs called for a 2.6GHz Pentium 4. I'm surprised that you would have problems with something from 2006. Perhaps it is a networking issue. Or maybe it belongs in my category of poorly performing console ports to which I referred in my previous post.

Most of the issues have to do with a very bad implementation of POST effects, used for light saber-like weapons and other glowing objects. The slowdown is noticeable both offline and online, so it's definitely not a networking issue. That being said, there is a networking issue that introduces noticeable lag between a hit and its effects, but it doesn't happen for everyone.

I'm inclined to think that it's a poor console port, but the PS2 version also has its share of performance problems.

Ah yes, I had forgotten about that since I don't own a PS3. Does it make a noticable difference? Do the textures get higher resolution or something?

From what I hear from PS3 owners, it does make a noticeable difference. I don't know what kind of up-scaling it does, but higher resolution of textures due to the increased video resolution is probably part of it.

Bullshit

[NeutronCowboy]

I haven't seen anything innovative done on a PC that couldn't have been done on a PS2. Crysis 2 is innovative? Oh please. Two extra bullet-points on the back of a box do not make a game "innovative". Portal: innovative. Tower of Goo: innovative. Minecraft: innovative. What do they have in common? They could run on hardware that is 10 years old.

I think the Mr. Crytek fails to see past his own problems: that the shiny that his company specializes in does very little to make a game special.

Re:Bullshit

[Peeteriz]

HD/3D rendering has nothing to do with games. The gameplay of Crysis 2 could be run on PS1, let alone PS2.

Sure, the aliens do look really good in Crytek's games a high end PC, but the game would be the same game if the graphics were pixellated brown goo.

Re:Bullshit

[icegreentea]

No, you stop this bullshit. It's pretty clear that they're talking about graphics capabilities here. The word innovative doesn't even appear anywhere in the summary or articles. Every fucking time we talk about games or movies, its the same shit. "Omg, it's shiny it sucks". Shiny and "creative" and "fun" and "innovative" are all largely orthogonal to each other. Their only real conflict is the budget. And this is goddamn Crysis. It's a game which is meant to be a tech demo. Like UT. Of fucking course their making it shiny.

And you know what? Crysis was shiny as fuck when it came out. It was slightly innovative within the FPS field (the multi power suit thing). And it was FUN. Maybe you didn't like it because you were clouded by your "only play games that can run on old hardware" snobbery, but I got to run around blowing shit up and throw chickens at people. And I look forward to doing it again. In New York.

Seriously I'm tired of this shit. It's not like these new shiny games are a torture to play or anything. You just refuse to enjoy them. Did you insist on Half Life being playable on 10 year old hardware when it came out too? Doom?

Re:Bullshit

[Movi]

I invite you to look at Shadow of the Colossus. HDR, fur shader, fairy shader, DoF, very nice looking motion blur, IK, and much more flashy effects, on a 200Mhz MIPS machine with 32MB of ram, complete with data streaming. That, and the game is considered to a goddam piece of art if there was ever a game that was worthy of calling art.

Re:Bullshit

[mikaelwbergene]

You seem to misunderstand the point of Crysis as a statement of technology. In some cases "HD/3D" rendering has a lot to do. Just like how some action movies don't have much in terms of story, but can be enjoyable as brainless eye-candy.

It's got decent/average gameplay, but the tech involved in making it pretty is advanced.

Re:Bullshit

[Pentium100]

Portal: innovative.

Yes

Tower of Goo: innovative.

Haven't played it, so I'll take your word for it.

Minecraft: innovative.

There was a similar game before, but MC is quite different from it now.

What do they have in common? They could run on hardware that is 10 years old.

Portal is on Source engine. While it could run on 10 year old hardware, the graphics would suck. You need a better video card (at least) to make it have decent FPS at max graphic settings on 1600x1200 or higher resolution.

Minecraft requires less resources, but also has worse graphics. I have installed the HD texture pack, because while the game itself is good, I did not like the low quality graphics.

A long time ago I used to play Wolfenstein3D all the time. It was a fun game and I didn't care about the graphics. Now I can't really play it without any higher resolution mod because the graphics are too low quality for me (and my head starts to hurt after a few minutes of playing it, though I can play newer games for hours without problems).

High quality graphics are necessary to me, like good controls. A game cannot be good on those two factors alone, but if graphics or controls suck then I most likely won't play the game. There are exceptions, I played "The Longest Journey" (fixed resolution - 640x480) with AA and AF turned to max and endured the bad graphics (mainly due to low resolution - my monitor has visible black lines between the scanlines at such low resolution), but usually I have to be able to easily see and recognize things in a game for me to fully enjoy playing it (no, I don't play text based games).

Re:Bullshit

[ksd1337]

Besides "Mr. Crytek" isn't talking about Innovation - he's talking about creative expression. The ability to have "more" in a game (better graphics, bigger worlds, more detail).

Creative expression? Give me a break. That's like saying that a photographer is more creative than a painter because photos have higher resolutions than paintings.

Re:Bullshit

[caitsith01]

I haven't seen anything innovative done on a PC that couldn't have been done on a PS2.

So you think graphics are completely irrelevant, good for you. I'm as much of a fan of gameplay innovation as anyone - I still play a lot of DOS games, in fact - but outstanding graphics DO add something, and there's no question that the PC has a lot more potential than current-gen consoles, let alone a PS2.

Re:Bullshit

[blahplusplus]

"Crysis 2 is innovative? Oh please. Two extra bullet-points on the back of a box do not make a game "innovative"."

The great irony in you saying this is that the reverse is true, console game quality is hurting PC game quality. PC games have been dumbed down for consoles and consolized for multiplatform release.

Also console ports for the PC get sloppy seconds due to multiplatform release. We saw the awful game for windows live inserted into Gears of War for PC. We also saw how Badly Halo and Halo 2 were ported to PC. Halo was originally a PC game they had to fit into the first xbox because MS needed a game to sell the system.

Don't believe it console games have effected PC game quality? Check out supcom 2 and Civ 5's terrible reviews on amazon.

Civ 5
http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-V-Pc/dp/B0038TT8QM/

Supcom 2

http://www.amazon.com/Supreme-Commander-2-Pc/dp/B002BXN6GY/

Re:Bullshit

[exomondo]

Really? How does the PS2 go with HD/3D rendering? They're the most basic of functions offered by PC's (for 10+ years now - I had 3D and HD on my geforce256). So surely the PS2 could do that?

The PS2 was 3D, unless you're talking of stereoscopic 3D, but the Geforce256 didn't have that.

Re:Bullshit

[exomondo]

but can be enjoyable as brainless eye-candy.

The point is he is claiming that is innovation, it just isn't.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it couldn't. The PS1 didn't have enough CPU power to pull off the number of simultanious enemies that Crysis had, or be able to exist in such large maps, or have as good AI.

If you're willing to sacrifice all of those, then yes you could, but the gameplay will be so different that its a pointless comparison.

For that matter, what PS3 game couldn't run just as well on an NES if you're willing to sacrifice all of that?

Re:Bullshit

[syousef]

I haven't seen anything innovative done on a PC that couldn't have been done on a PS2. Crysis 2 is innovative? Oh please.

I agree Crysis is just eyecandy for the most part. But show me a decent flight simulator on an X-Box or PS3 or Wii. I am NOT talking about a shoot-em-up. I'm talking about something that will rival MS Flight Sim or X-Plane.

Re:Bullshit

[Haeleth]

Also blocky models, blurry textures, and horrible terrain pop-in. Yes, it could be done on the PS2, and it's an absolutely amazing bit of work considering the hardware limitations.

But that doesn't mean it couldn't have been even better with PS3 technology, and even better than that with today's PC technology.

You don't need flashy graphics to make a good game, but if you acknowledge that the quality of the visuals are one of the things that allowed SotC to become a work of art, how would it not have been improved by the ability to render those visuals exactly as its creators envisaged them, instead of having them limited by technology that was lagging well behind the state of the art?

Re:Bullshit

[NeutronCowboy]

Yes, it is indeed pretty clear they're talking about graphics. It is also pretty clear that when they say "is holding back creative expression" and "holding back quality games", what they mean is that all their creative expression and quality work is going into making a game prettier. Which in turns means they have no idea how to make quality games.

That's what I'm calling bullshit on. The fact that creative expression is identical with fill-rates or polygons/sec. I'm sorry you were so gung-ho to call me on my snobbery that you missed that point.

Re:Bullshit

[mikaelwbergene]

Technological innovation doesn't count now? I thought this was news for nerds.

Re:Bullshit

[Ziekheid]

Did you even try any of their games? I was able to run Crysis fine on an old 2ghz athlon with 1gb of mem and an old nvidia g-force 4 card (about the same requirements for Minecraft btw). Sure it didn't look as amazing as it could but it ran flawlessly.
I'm not saying crysis in specific was very innovative though but it could run fine on a great variation of hardware including the very old.
And how can you make any claims about innovation on a game that isn't even out yet. Also, some people actually do care if a game looks realistic because it CAN add something to the experience and I do believe that highly realistic physics can make a game 'innovative'.

Re:Bullshit

[Pentium100]

No, that's like saying that a photographer with a good DSLR or a film SLR camera can be more creative than a photographer with a cell phone that takes 320x240 photos. The photographer with a good camera can make his photos low resolution, but he can also take high resolution photos where you see every detail, while the photographer with a cell phone cannot take high resolution photos even if he wants to.

You can make a low resolution PC game (Minecraft or any old PC game) but you can also make a high resolution game if you want to. If you were creating a game for the NES or a PC 15 years ago, you would not be able to create a game with good graphics even if you really wanted to.

Re:Bullshit

[Trogre]

Unless you, like me, actually like better graphics. Speaking for myself, I like my gaming to be as immersive an experience as possible. This means smooth motion (which consoles historically do fairly well - if their frame rates are low they're at least consistently low), and realistic graphics and sound. Console games with their massive jaggy pixels, repeated textures and walled-in maps just don't create the sense of realism that PC games do. Sure, I like to break out some classic PC and console games from time to time but usually for novelty or nostalgic reasons.

Quality gameplay is a given. Games without good gameplay don't get a look in so that isn't a variable. Note this doesn't actually need to be innovative - just good. If you judge any creative work on original innovation alone you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Back in the day when DooM came out there was little you could do for immersion once you had a PC capable of 30fps at 320x200, and darkened the room. But it was the best we had back then, and I will continue to pursue the best gaming experiences of our time.

Re:Bullshit

[Trogre]

The gameplay would be the same on a 386 with CGA graphics if you get down to it. A slight variant of the gameplay could be done over a TeleType terminal.

What was your point?

Re:Bullshit

[alexhard]

Google Dwarf Fotrress.

Re:Bullshit

[exomondo]

Technological innovation doesn't count now? I thought this was news for nerds.

Not for the gamer, the end user sees 'better graphics', which is a progression, not an innovation. It takes innovation to get faster CPUs too but i haven't seen end users ever describe Intel's latest offering as 'innovative'.

It takes more than better visuals to give designers additional 'creative expression'.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is so blatantly ignorant of gaming that I don't even know where to begin.

Tower of Goo is innovative? Minecraft is innovative? Tell me, how many games have you played in total? Five, maybe ten? Those two titles are both highly derivative of previous games. The fact that they're a fad now does not somehow make them "innovative." Justin Bieber isn't innovative just because he's popular. Portal is the only game you listed that fits the term.

And if you don't understand the technology that went into Crysis (which is clearly the case), then why are you commenting? You sound like another clueless tool without a smidgen of technical knowledge or expertise. Crysis 2 is not even out yet for you to judge. Go back to sitting on your couch and playing Madden.

Re:Bullshit

[shutdown -p now]

I don't know about you, but Doom, and then Descent, and then Quake, were all innovative to me as a gamer, largely due to their much improved engines * graphics, long before I became a programmer.

Re:Bullshit

[exomondo]

i found that more to be in the move from 2D to 3D, that was a big step that affected the world you could play in.

Re:Bullshit

[Cimexus]

Actually Minecraft chugs like crazy on anything older than about 4 years (with dedicated GPU), and if you are using integrated graphics, it chugs on pretty much everything. I tried it the other day on a ~brand new~ PC which happened to have integrated graphics and it was close to unplayable unless you put the draw distance down to the lowest setting (which is like 10 metres in front of you, lol).

Minecraft is written in pure Java and is known to perform like a dog. It doesn't need much in the way of CPU, but is very dependant on having good 3D acceleration, even though it 'looks' pixelly and blocky and not hardware accelerated at all... ;)

Still I love it. Fantastic game. I just wish it performed better ... I have 3 year old laptops that run things like WoW silky smooth that can barely handle Minecraft (which looks a lot 'worse' by comparison).

Re:Bullshit

[cgenman]

You can make a game 20% more immersive by increasing visual fidelity, but you can't put enough lipstick on it to call it art. The concepts that made Shadow of the Colossus art could have been executed on a SNES. There is a 2D flash Portal that still feels exactly like Portal.

There is a trap in there: Visuals always make something *better*, therefore if we polish the visuals enough the game can be any arbitrary level of good. And that's just not true. You have to have a core, a soul, that makes it appealing on a human level. That's not going to be true of Crysis. Don't get me wrong, Crysis was fun. But it was bubblegum. Half-Life 2 looked amazing, but it also had the gravity gun, a story, and an eerie flip on the usual hero mythos.

Re:Bullshit

[Khyber]

"Minecraft: innovative. What do they have in common? They could run on hardware that is 10 years old."

Funny you say that. It will not run on my 10 year old P4 with a Radeon 9500 Pro.

And that is because the whole thing is JAVA, which requires lots of power and a single-core P4 just can't keep up anymore.

Had the game designer just stuck with x86 ASM, it'd run on hardware almost TWENTY years old.

Re:Bullshit

[Khyber]

or have as good AI.

Crysis? Good AI? I've had better AI out of turn-based RPGs.

Re:Bullshit

[Khyber]

Yes, the geForce 256 DID have it, if you got the card made by Asus. Came with a pair of active shutter lenses that physically plugged into the card itself for sync with your monitor.

It was an upgrade from my Asus TNT2 with the same thing.

Re:Bullshit

[Khyber]

Oh, and the game that came with it, some game where you played as an anthro pig cop.

Re:Bullshit

[beelsebob]

Halo was originally a PC game

Actually, it was originally a Mac game.

Re:Bullshit

[UnknownSoldier]

> But that doesn't mean it couldn't have been even better with PS3 technology,

Well, we'll find out next year, since Ico and Shadows of the Colossus are coming in 2011. :-)

Re:Bullshit

[Unipuma]

I hate to break it to you, but more expensive equipment doesn't make you a better photographer.
What will make you a better photographer is getting a sense for composition, light, colours. It is about -what- you put in your picture, not about what equipment you used to do it.
Yes, there might be some technical tricks you can do with a more expensive camera, but that is not the essence of photography.
Ohh, and talking about cell phone vs DSLR:
http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/k800i/index.html

Re:Bullshit

[gTsiros]

a photographer with a fancy camera can not take more creative photographs. the *camera* can.

a photographer can be creative with a box with a hole on the side. in fact, he *has* to be.

the photographer is the one who puts in the effort and who in the end determines the quality (whichever way you want to measure it) of the photograph.

Re:Bullshit

[Pentium100]

I said a cellphone that does 320x240. You can sense light composition etc all you want, but you still won't be able to recognize the person you took the photo of (especially if the person is father away). At least in my experience, cell phones have trouble taking photos in bad lighting conditions (for example at night), while a decent camera can have very long exposure and take the picture. A bigger sensor in a camera means that the noise is lower, useful when it's dark.

Also, my friend once told me that if is very difficult if even possible to take a photo of a spider's web with a camera that does not have manual focus (since autofocus will focus to whatever is behind the web).

Same thing on PC games - System Shock 2 (which IIRC is reviewed as "good game") or half life was not possible on the NES. Minecraft too. OTOH, you can have Super Mario Bros on a current PC (whether using an emulator or porting it).

Re:Bullshit

[CronoCloud]

How did console gaming affect Civ V, since it's not a console game, and as far as I know is not going to get ported?

Re:Bullshit

[CronoCloud]

It isn't 1985 anymore, when ex-colonels got jobs working at computer wargame and sim companies and when bearded Unix geeks who played Avalon Hill games on the tabletop were a larger portion of the computer gaming market.

Nobody does flight sims for consoles, because they know they won't sell, the market isn't there. It's not that they couldn't do one (especially on the more modern consoles with the mouse and keyboard support), it's just that they know it's not a good idea.

Re:Bullshit

[ultranova]

That's what I'm calling bullshit on. The fact that creative expression is identical with fill-rates or polygons/sec.

Those things do set the limits of what you can do. Want a wide open room? You have to render all those polygons it's made of. That's why the "maze" style of FPS is ever so popular: it allows you to cull the amount of stuff drawn at any one moment through a visibility map. It's only in the past few years where large, open gameworlds have become popular: the whole concept of "levels" exists to get around the limited amount of memory and processing power.

Or suppose we're making a simulation game? Then it's the CPU and memory that are going to impose the limits. In its time, "Simlife" could take 15 minutes per turn, and even today, running huge worlds with no animal/plant limits through DOSBOX is slow. Or maybe a new version of SimCity with a more detailed economic simulation and bigger cities?

Computing power determines what can be done with computers.

Re:Bullshit

[ultranova]

Had the game designer just stuck with x86 ASM, it'd run on hardware almost TWENTY years old.

No, it wouldn't. 486 had trouble with Duke Nukem 3D, it sure has heck couldn't render 10s of thousands of cubes in real 3D.

Re:Bullshit

[Ash Vince]

Yes, it is indeed pretty clear they're talking about graphics. It is also pretty clear that when they say "is holding back creative expression" and "holding back quality games", what they mean is that all their creative expression and quality work is going into making a game prettier. Which in turns means they have no idea how to make quality games.

There are many of us who think that a game maxing out the capabilities of recent graphic cards on the market is actually an essential for a quality game. Let you guys who haven't upgraded your gaming rig in 10 years play a cut down version sure, but I don't see why I should. You can then turn down all the graphics settings to make sure it runs under your DX9 hardware but we get to see a nicer image so get a slightly more immersive experience.

There are certainly other essentials for making a quality game (like playabilty, story, fun, a challenge, etc) but it taking advantage of new hardware is equally important. Otherwise all the games on the market would look no better than consoles even though PC hardware is now a world away. A top end I7 gaming rig is far more powerful hardware than any of the consoles, so PC games should try and use it to the max.

It is also worth noting that it is not just about making the game look prettier. There are things like destructible scenery and better physics that go a long way in many games. One of the things that I loved about Half-Life 2 when it came out was the water. The way it acted was so much truer in that than had been done in many games before. This would have been hard as hell on previous generations of hardware. Likewise for the gravity gun and the way you could get weird bounces of certain objects.

In the first Crysis there were things that really ate up CPU power. They must have been hard as hell to get looking half decent on hardware like the X-Box360. Anyone remember the weird spaceship style under water level? I could see my CPU usage go nuts when that started. The fact that you spent the whole level floating through something that seemed to have the consistency of soup was a damn nice touch and made you play differently. In many ways that was similar to the airbourne vehicle or tank levels for making the game more varied that just being stuck on two feet throughout.

I was looking for my old copy of Crysis recently to put my new 480 through it's paces.

Re:Bullshit

[BenoitRen]

If you were creating a game for the NES or a PC 15 years ago, you would not be able to create a game with good graphics even if you really wanted to.

Great, now we're arguing that machines 15 years ago didn't have good graphics? Give me a break.

Re:Bullshit

[GameboyRMH]

Stalker's also going to be consolobotomized :(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Chernobyl#S.T.A.L.K.E.R._2

They'll have no choice but to swap the realistic firearm physics for arcadey Halo-like shooting, those levels of accuracy just aren't possible on the current console controllers. I used to play shooters with a Logitech Cordless Rumblepad, but those were FAR more accurate than console controllers.

Re:Bullshit

[syousef]

Nobody does flight sims for consoles, because they know they won't sell, the market isn't there. It's not that they couldn't do one (especially on the more modern consoles with the mouse and keyboard support), it's just that they know it's not a good idea.

You're simply talking out of your backside. There are many many companies that specialise in addons for the major sims. If Microsoft hadn't botched FSX (buggier than ever, required a computer that hadn't been created yet) then killed off the franchise there would be even more interest. There are even companies that make specialised hardware.

What you're actually saying is YOU have no interest. That's fine until you start to spread ignorant bullshit about the state of the hobby.

Re:Bullshit

[BitZtream]

You couldn't be more wrong. Resolution beyond the most basic of levels doesn't define how good a game looks. There are great looking NES games. A good artist can do better with better equipment, but certainly doesn't require one.

You should go work for EA or one of the other big game companies, you guys both don't get it.

Re:Bullshit

[DarthVain]

Was any of those released to consoles? No? I guess you just disproved your own point somehow...

One could argue however that console controllers are being far more innovative...

Re:Bullshit

[Pentium100]

No, I was just giving an example of technology that limits creative expression. Maybe someone really wanted to create a photorealistic game 15 years ago, but could not do that because the technology could not do that.

OTOH, you can create a game with low quality graphics on modern machine, which means that you have more options to express your creativity.

Re:Bullshit

[CronoCloud]

You're simply talking out of your backside.

No, I'm not.

There are many many companies that specialise in addons for the major sims. There are even companies that make specialised hardware.

Yes there are, but that doesn't mean it's a large market or a very large one percentage wise in the entire gaming market. Sure, there will always be those Tom Clancy/Dale Brown afcionados with the full HOTAS and cockpit setups, but there aren't very many of them. Not enough to sustain a large number of games or companies making such.

Re:Bullshit

[Pentium100]

Whatever the photographer can do with a 320x240 cellphone camera, he can do with a good DSLR. However, with the DSLR he can do things that he cannot do with the cellphone.

Re:Bullshit

[Pentium100]

Game resolution, texture resolution, polygon counts, lighting, shading etc.

Yes, there are games on NES that look great when you take the age of the system into account. Modern games with high quality (not just resolution) graphics can look almost as realistic as movies or photos.

Also, 160x120 looks bad no matter how many polygons and textures you have. 1920x1440 can lok good or bad depending on the other factors.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Crytek has a lot of stuff in their CryEngine that actually maps subtle tricks common to film making into realtime graphics. That includes things like advanced (and - if wanted - not so physically correct, but "more realistic") lighting, custom tone mapping for the end result and lots of other stuff.

All of this is at its core a technical advancement in real-time graphics, but they map it in such a way that artists can wield that technology in their ways to create style and mood in their scenes. Want the scene to be in warmer or cooler colors or in sepia/black and white/whatever? Fine, export a screenshot from the level editor to Photoshop, tweak colors with the familiar tools you have in there, reimport it and the engine then analyzes your tweaks and renders the whole scene in that tone. Want to have a very specific, complex lighting setup with, say, special lighting for specific objects (which is also done a bit in live-action movies, btw...), the editor will allow you to do that.

Used properly, tools like that help shaping the mood of a scene subtly. It's the stuff that gets to you subconsciously without you being able to really point it out. In other words: although it sounds like pure tech for tech's sake, it's actually a better toolbox for artistic expression.

Actually, I'm mildly surprised that the stuff that CryEngine 3 does runs as smoothly on consoles as it obviously does.

Re:Bullshit

[oji-sama]

Crysis? Good AI? I've had better AI out of turn-based RPGs.

I would think that a good AI is more important for turn-based RPGs, so that isn't very surprising.

Re:Bullshit

[blahplusplus]

The obsession with social games and simplification, they made civ revolution (for consoles) before civ 5.

See here:

Social anxiety (article @ gamesppot)

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6284524.html?tag=topslot;title;4

Search for "facebook" or "civilization"

Also see here (console version of civ)
http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-Revolution-Xbox-360/dp/B000WMEEAI/

Note that Civ 5 was hugely stripped down and console-itis and "facebook games" is part of the problematic mentality of the game industry right now.

Re:Bullshit

[oji-sama]

Some areas of Mass Effect 1 suffered from the mazes pretty badly. Although part of the blame is certainly on the level designers, as some of the 'tunnels' were simplified more than others. (And the wide open spaces were usually pretty sparse...) Haven't tried the second one yet, so no idea how that compares.

Re:Bullshit

[tehcyder]

Sure, the aliens do look really good in Crytek's games a high end PC, but the game would be the same game if the graphics were pixellated brown goo.

You're right, Quake is still fun to play.

Re:Bullshit

[gTsiros]

in other words

a competent photographer can take good photographs with a crappy camera.

a crappy photographer can not take a good photograph with a better camera.

Re:Bullshit

[tehcyder]

Had the game designer just stuck with x86 ASM, it'd run on hardware almost TWENTY years old.

No, it wouldn't. 486 had trouble with Duke Nukem 3D, it sure has heck couldn't render 10s of thousands of cubes in real 3D.

Duke Nukem 3D was released in 1996 and the original Pentium processor in 1993. I think if you were any sort of gamer, you would have had a Pentium three years (i.e. hardly cutting edge by then) after its release

Re:Bullshit

[MogNuts]

I love how people always bring up Crysis when talking about good graphics and graphics ruining games. I have something to say to you all: you're all dead wrong.

Crysis was one of the most innovate FPS games of this decade, because of its technology. Crysis is as far beyond the normal FPS as Call of Duty is to House of the Dead.

Most FPS are simple. Take call of duty (insert # here):

The game is on rails
You kill people by either a gun or a knife melee attack
Done.

Crysis:

You can accomplish the mission by going anywhere on the entire island. There are multiple ways to do it. It's like saying fallout 3 is just a FPS.

And killing enemies:

I can shoot them
I can grab them and throw them into trees, rocks, over cliffs
I can lob a barrel and when its close, shoot the exploding barrel
I can jump on top of a building and destroy the roof, thereby collapsing the building and destroying the enemy
I can throw an object, the enemy will follow it to investigate, thereby creating a diversion, and then I can sneak up and kill him with melee or guns
I can hold and enemy, drag him away to not alert guards, and then off him away from alerting guards.

After years of FPS's, I was bored as crap. Oh boy, another FPS. Shoot, story event, shoot. Rinse, repeat. Crysis was the first FPS I wasn't bored of in like 10 years.

Could you do any of what Crysis did on a console? NO.

Re:Bullshit

[Pentium100]

a competent photographer can take good pictures with a crappy camera and better pictures with a better camera.

a crappy photographer cannot take a good picture even with the best camera in the world.

Re:Bullshit

[oji-sama]

"Minecraft: innovative. What do they have in common? They could run on hardware that is 10 years old."

Funny you say that. It will not run on my 10 year old P4 with a Radeon 9500 Pro.

And that is because the whole thing is JAVA, which requires lots of power and a single-core P4 just can't keep up anymore.

Had the game designer just stuck with x86 ASM, it'd run on hardware almost TWENTY years old.

Have you actually tried programming something like Minecraft? I don't think the main problem is really Java. And Notch has written about this also. The problem is the amount of the (dynamic) cubes. I believe there are other ways of implementing the graphics than he is doing, but they would be less dynamic and more difficult to make (major) changes to.

Re:Bullshit

[Philomage]

I still prefer it in the original Klingon!

Re:Bullshit

[syousef]

Yes there are, but that doesn't mean it's a large market or a very large one percentage wise in the entire gaming market. Sure, there will always be those Tom Clancy/Dale Brown afcionados with the full HOTAS and cockpit setups, but there aren't very many of them. Not enough to sustain a large number of games or companies making such.

Again, you're talking shit. There is an entire economy built on flight simulation. Try telling CH Products, Abacus, Just Flight, Flight 1, Commercial Level Simulations, Carenado, Eaglesoft, Wilco, Feelthere, Alphasim, Captain Sim, PMDG, Aerosim, Realair, Cloud 9, Proflight X-Plane, and Saitek that there isn't a large enough market. That is not an exhaustive list by any means and all but the last name on it make nothing but flight simulation products.

Is that enough companies for you? And that is with MSFS officially killed off for a couple of years. I suppose you're going to start going on about their size because they're not as large as EA or Activision?

You sir are an idiot. Attitudes like yours kill off flight simulation in favour of idiotic unoriginal FPS. You have NO idea what you're talking about but you keep insisting you know everything there is to know about the flight sim market and unfortunately if there are enough of you talking such horseshit business people listen.

Re:Bullshit

[del_diablo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Outcast
This game is from 2002, came out in the third month.
It FEATURES LARGE ROOMS, and you can TOSS INN tons of enemies if you actually bothered. You could do that back then too.
There exists games for the PS2 which allows over 1000 units controlled by the AI onscreen at the same time.
A modified version of the M&B engine can easly pull out 2000 units onscreen when running on modern hardware.
So it is not about power, because we already have enough power to get the computation done.
There existed really huge levels back in the days, GTA had huge 3D levels back in 2003? Etc?
I agree that more firepower to rendre more stuff is a good thing, but I agree with the poster you respond to: More shiny is not innovation, it is just more shiny for the sake of shiny. Just do the models properly, do reasonable texture sizes, implent some hack to make stuff use less resources, and give us really really large areas.

Re:Bullshit

[Raenex]

GTA had huge 3D levels back in 2003?

Actually, it was 2001.

Re:Bullshit

[tycoex]

I like this post, If I had any mod points left I would definitely mod you up.

The game starts off at a set value depending on content, and then the graphics is a modifier.

We also can't forget about art direction when talking about graphics either. Some games that went for cartooney instead of realistic look much better today than other games from their time. Realistic doesn't tend to age well, because there will always be something more realistic. If you aren't shooting for realistic in the first place then your game can age much better. Of course, not realistic visual styles can still benefit from a more powerful system.

War-face?

[pookemon]

a new military-based shooter called Warface

Sorry, facebook will insist that you change it's name.

Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[mikaelwbergene]

And it has happened again as it has happened every single generation of consoles and as it will in every future generation.

One platform is constantly shifting and upgrading, the other doesn't.

What do you think happens in the gap between console releases?

Unfortunately they're currently too busy trying to milk motion controls and using that as an excuse to not release new hardware. Hopefully Nintendo will just out of nowhere drop a magic console developed using their profits from their current gen console.

Either way some games are better on consoles (fighting, local multiplayer, driving games etc) , while other games I prefer my mouse and keyboard support (simulation, rts, fps, etc)

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[ninjacheeseburger]

Either way some games are better on consoles (fighting, local multiplayer, driving games etc) , while other games I prefer my mouse and keyboard support (simulation, rts, fps, etc)

/quote

console != controller

You can play pc games with almost any input device you want, including xbox 360 controllers.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[mikaelwbergene]

True, but how often have you gotten friends around the pc monitor for playing a fighting game together vs on the whatever inch tv?

Now granted you could also argue that console != display, but I have a desk set up for a single person for work and gaming and a tv with a sofa set up for multiple people.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[tepples]

You can play pc games with almost any input device you want, including xbox 360 controllers.

Say I've hooked up my PC to a TV and connected four Xbox 360 controllers through a USB hub. How many controllers does a typical major-label game designed for the PC support? One. Instead of adding shared-screen play, publishers expect players to buy four PCs, four monitors, and (more importantly) four copies of the game.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[ADRA]

It may just be me, but how many people play 4 player split screens for games these days? I thought it was bad during the time when tube TV's were standard, but how many games these days support more than 1/2 players simultaneously? This is of course ignoring platformer type games that can actually get away with having a few players on screen at the same time without degrading usability. Racing games? Split /Squinty screen. FPS? Split /Squinty screen. RTS? Not on consoles. Puzzle games? Sure, because they generally don't need spacial relevance.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[TheEyes]

It may just be me, but how many people play 4 player split screens for games these days?

This is actually where Wii games shine. They can't do online multiplayer; heck, even connecting two Wii consoles that are in the same room is an enormous pain. The one thing they do well though is putting four people on the same console, playing the same game. It's one of the secrets to their success: all those party games and coop modes really sell the system to casual players.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[tepples]

How many controllers does a typical major-label game designed for the PC support? One.

Which is the same as the number of controllers typically used with any major-label game designed for the PS3 or XBox 360

Which puts the Wii a generation ahead of PC, PS3, and 360. It's so powerful it can handle four people at once. (Wait, what?)

The mass market is online play.

Which becomes more difficult when there are more gamers than gaming PCs in a household, especially children, or when you have friends over for some other reason and then happen to get the itch to play a video game. Both happen often in my extended family. In addition, few games support spawn installation, and four copies of a PC game cost as much as one of those plastic-instrument music games.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[Nemyst]

Depends on the game. Sins of a Solar Empire allows for I think 3 players on the same key.

Not all publishers and developers were created equal.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[ADRA]

I completely agree. For the large segment of multiplayer Wii games (of which I own a few) they work well for local coop. I wish to amend through that these games are almost never split screen in nature(beside Mario kart which I've never played local multiplayer), and the games themselves lend to the ability to have either all players in screen at the same time, or they have a variation of turn based action.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[Khyber]

"True, but how often have you gotten friends around the pc monitor for playing a fighting game together vs on the whatever inch tv?"

All day every day, because my 1080p TV IS the computer monitor and I have (and am still tweaking and perfecting) the biggest fighting game in existence with over 800 characters, you can't even see the entire character roster with the smallest possible icon size.

And you can't beat an arcade stick like THAT.

Any further questions?

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[definate]

I used to LAN heaps, and this was back when games did actually support that.

Do you know who played them like that?

No one. That's a fucking shit gaming experience. Hell, when I'm around at a friends and we're playing console games, only rarely do we split the screen. Usually we do single and share turns.

Though I do recall when I was a kid we liked to do that, and we do that for casual games. So in that context maybe consoles are better, though there are often PC variants of those casual games anyway, and very few people don't have a computer these days. Especially if they're really into games.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[ultranova]

Unfortunately they're currently too busy trying to milk motion controls and using that as an excuse to not release new hardware. Hopefully Nintendo will just out of nowhere drop a magic console developed using their profits from their current gen console.

They aren't releasing new hardware because with every new hardware generation the development costs for games and the cost of hardware unit rise. Someone has to make all those ultra-detailed character models and textures, someone has to make the sounds, someone has to make the levels and fill in all the details. Why do you think procedural generation is getting so much attention lately?

What all of this means is that you have to sell a lot of games to become profitable, which in turn means there must be a huge existing customer base with consoles; but that in turn requires plenty of good games to exist exclusively for that console. And as the per-unit price for consoles keeps on rising, it becomes harder and harder to sell them and establish that customer base, unless you sell at a loss, which is understandably a huge financial risk.

Nintendo's solution was to make Wii: a console with outdated technology and a gimmicky controller. It worked, so they aren't likely to be making a "super-console" anytime soon.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[Ash Vince]

Say I've hooked up my PC to a TV [wikipedia.org] and connected four Xbox 360 controllers through a USB hub. How many controllers does a typical major-label game designed for the PC support? One. Instead of adding shared-screen play, publishers expect players to buy four PCs, four monitors, and (more importantly) four copies of the game.

No, each player buy one copy and then takes their PC round mates house. Or they play over this amazing new invention you might have heard of, its called "The Internet".

The multiscreen playing thing on consoles, but it is a bit of joke since you can always glance across at your fellow players screen and cheat. This might not matter in driving games, but in shooters and things it removes any aspect of being crafty and sneaking up on people. I would certainly not say it should not be included, but I would like to see more console games support head to head play on different consoles since they are much cheaper to but 2 or 3 of and leave one at your mates house.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[tepples]

Do you know who played them like that?

I'll let the sales figures for the Street Fighter and Smash Bros. series speak for me.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[GameboyRMH]

Whoa cool, where can I get more info on your fighting game?

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[mikaelwbergene]

Yes, how often do you do artwork on it that requires pixel perfect precision?

That's why I keep a separate monitor for my work/gaming computer that I can be close to.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[MogNuts]

How many console games are designed for this? 4? And are you seriously advocating playing l4d 4 player on the same TV. How could you even make out what you were shooting?

Every time someone brings this up, must be discovering this for the first time. For the rest of us, playing 4 player golden eye or split screen GoW just sucks. Keep your split screen multiplayer.

Maybe the only thing is dance/rythm games, which is how much of the amount of available games out there? And not to mention the type I could care less about.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[Khyber]

Just look up MUGEN on Google.

Right now I'm at about 6 gigs of data and climbing.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[Khyber]

Every day. But that's what the ZOOM feature with thumbnail view is for. I also have to do the animations, tweak combat AI, and much more.

Re:Getting pre-emptive deja vu here...

[tepples]

Neither of which were split-screen

Which was my point. People complain that they hate the split screen, but one does not need to split the screen for local multiplayer. Fighting games are underrepresented on PCs despite not having to split the screen.

Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

as long as the developers target the consoles and PC then you only have to match the specs of that console generation.

Re:Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[jjohnson]

There was never a need a for yearly upgrades. Current games have always been comfortably playable at less-than-max settings for PCs two or three years behind the latest-and-greatest. It's gamer dick-swinging that led the misguided to constantly chase the "current" hardware--the producers of PC games always allowed for older machines.

Re:Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[complete loony]

Um, no. That may be true now, but that's a fairly recent change. It wasn't that long ago that new games targeted bleeding edge hardware at the time of release. I think roughly the release of Half-life 2 & Doom 3 were the turning point. That's the last time I remember people planning a hardware upgrade specifically to coincide with a game purchase.

Re:Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[SpazmodeusG]

That's a recent thing and is OPs point. You most certainly couldn't certain play games on a 3 year old system back in the mid-late 90's for example.

eg. Unreal 1 was released 22nd May 1998. It required a 166Mhz CPU at minimum. Less than 3 years before that the top of the line CPU would have been the Pentium 120 (released 27th May 1995). So you could have bought a top of the line CPU and in less than 3 years it'd be below minimum requirements for the newest games. That sort of thing was normal in that era. It doesn't happen today though.

Re:Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[SpazmodeusG]

A Voodoo2 wasn't around 3 years before Unreal. The Voodoo1 wasn't even available 3 years before Unreal was released.

So if you purchased a top of the line PC 3 years before Unreal 1 was released you would be below specifications. I'm comparing a top of the line PC 3 years before a game was released to the minimum requirements. Bringing in low end comparisons of PCs now is irrevelant. Metro 2033 will run on a top of the line PC from 3 years ago.

Re:Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[jjohnson]

Or you could have waited a year or two to play Unreal if it wasn't timed well with your upgrade cycle. Didn't you ever give a theater-release a miss and plan to rent it on DVD?

PC gamers play up the hardships of frequent upgrades, but they're only necessary to play the latest-and-greatest games at max settings immediately upon release. Relax any of those requirements and a more sane upgrade schedule is within easy reach.

Re:Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[Uberbah]

A Voodoo2 wasn't around 3 years before Unreal.

Not his point.

So if you purchased a top of the line PC 3 years before Unreal 1

So you realize your entire argument is resting on a single game?

Re:Gone is the need for yearly PC upgrades

[Uberbah]

Um, no. That may be true now, but that's a fairly recent change.

Nope. When game developers start creating a game, they begin with what's available at the time. So a game that began development in 2000 and released in 2003 would have, at most, high end 2000 hardware as it's baseline. Case in point: Doom 3, where the baseline GPU was the original Geforce.

Steam sales data

[ninjacheeseburger]

All major publishers have games on steam, so I'm sure they have a reasonable idea of how well their games are selling even if we don't, just looking at the steam stats can give a rough idea.

To be honest I like being able to play the latest games with the settings on full, "developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is" is not necessarily a bad thing, its the game play vs graphics argument.

Re:Captain Obvious

[tepples]

Why can't, say, Dell or Gateway make a PC in a home-theater-PC case for 599 US dollars and call it the new fourth console?

WASD: Try a Nunchuk sometime

[tepples]

Have the console support mouse/keyboard input

A few PS3 games already do, and the other two still support text entry using a USB keyboard. The Wii Remote is like a mouse, and unlike WASD, the Nunchuk extension controller has proportional (aka "analog") response.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Sancho]

Most of the really good Wii titles don't even use the Wii motion controls for anything more than a gimmick, though. Frequently, shaking could have been replaced with a simple button press (and that would have been far more accurate--I'm looking at you, New Super Mario Bros. Wii) Pointing at the screen gets quite a bit of use, at least since it's got a fairly obvious application (aiming in a FPS.)

The accelerometers were a gimmick, and I think that Nintendo knows it. It worked out for them--they did a good amount of business while in competition with two other giants. What I think Nintendo has proven in this generation is that 2D side-scrollers (or 2.5D or whatever) aren't dead and are actually quite popular, as long as the controls and gameplay are good.

I don't see much of a need to go HD, other than to finally get rid of the last holdout for analog input on my TV.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Cinder6]

I would say the main problem with the Wii is its library. And this comes from somebody who owns one. I really don't care about its graphics, but there just isn't much that interests me on the platform. I have 7 Wii games, while I have 42 or so PS3 games and 17 360 games. Granted, there are a few games that I'm interested in, but it's only 3 or so. So much of the library is dedicated to shovelware games and kid stuff.

I think the culprit behind this is that publishers want to make multiplatform games to maximize returns. It's easy to match the 360 and PS3 games, as they're of like performance. The Wii? Not so much (due to both the hardware limitations and the different default control scheme). Exclusives for it would be better, but exclusives aren't what make the most money these days. So developers make the big games for the 360 and PS3, but give the Wii spin-offs or other budget titles that just aren't as good. Case in point: the 360 and PS3 got Resident Evil 5. The Wii? Umbrella Chronicles and a re-release of RE4.

Of course, none of this matters to Nintendo, as the Wii is basically a license to print money. It's great for those who were never really into gaming before this generation, but the "traditional" gaming segment is more or less left out.

(Or maybe I need to look harder?)

Multiple independent "generations"

[tepples]

PC is easily a generation ahead right now.

Wii showed that graphical output isn't the only thing that defines a hardware generation. In the seventh generation, while Microsoft and Sony were moving their output forward by a generation, Nintendo moved its input forward by a generation by bundling a Bluetooth handheld pointing device with the console. It took the other guys years to come up with Kinect and Move to match the Wii Remote.

But the major consoles are still ahead of PCs in how many simultaneous players a game will usually support. This is in part because consoles are ahead in what monitor size their makers can encourage their users to connect. Sure, using a TV as a monitor has been easy since HDTV became common starting in 2006, but home theater PCs are still a rarity for some reason. Is it usability, or is it a plain old path-dependent Catch-22?

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[Doctor_Jest]

They're flat. Not dead. Try reading without a bias next time.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[thegarbz]

Wii showed that graphical output isn't the only thing that defines a hardware generation.

No it's not the only thing. But yet when I play a game on the Wii I can't help but think what it would be like if it could at least keep it's simple graphics and run at the resolution of my TV, an aspect of a game that requires zero extra code and just some more powerful hardware. This wouldn't improve gameplay but it would make the overall experience nicer. Band Hero runs much smoother on the PS3 than the Wii, and this smoothness helps in the timing of the notes.

It's not the games fault, nor the programming, just the consoles. I don't see why we need to settle for second best for no reason what so ever at a day and age where the average mobile phone is more powerful than some of our consoles.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[CronoCloud]

It took the other guys years to come up with Kinect and Move to match the Wii Remote.

Excuse me, but motion control on the PS2 predates the Wii, don't you remember the original PS2 Eyetoy? Didn't you see the SCEfoo tech demo showing off the Eyetoy with a wand controller..pre Wii?

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[tepples]

You are only considering 'simultaneous players infront of a single device'.

Which is important in households with multiple gamers.

If you are a PC gamer, you are usually immersed in a 3rd world

"Third world" as in where the gold farmers live?

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[Skuto]

Flat at about 50% over Xbox360 and PS3, by the way.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[tepples]

motion control on the PS2 predates the Wii, don't you remember the original PS2 Eyetoy? Didn't you see the SCEfoo tech demo showing off the Eyetoy with a wand controller..pre Wii?

You are referring to demos like this one, no? I'm curious: why didn't that catch on?

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[BenoitRen]

The fact that you call the Wii "ancient tech" proves your bias.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[tepples]

Have you been missing out on all those MMORPGs with thousands of players per server?

And a separate gaming PC and separate subscription per player. This can get expensive with multiple gamers in a household.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[CronoCloud]

From what I read, the limitations were the Eyetoy camera and the PS2 hardware. It wasn't quite powerful enough to do what they wanted with it. They decided to wait for better camera tech to become cheaper and for a CPU with more horsepower.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[DavidTC]

Sure, using a TV as a monitor has been easy since HDTV became common starting in 2006, but home theater PCs are still a rarity for some reason.

I am often baffled by this.

In fact, I'm baffled by the fact someone hasn't come out with a thing that plugs into the USB port and second DVI output on a computer, and works wirelessly to another box, which you plug in HDMI with sound (A USB sound card is built in.) into your HDTV, and has some USB ports for keyboard and mouse and IR receiver. And it has a toggle button on both the output box and the USB device, so you can switch it with just a press either at the computer or the TV. Switching it would, by default, flip the video over.

A slightly more expensive version could come with a wireless keyboard and mouse (Whether or not these wireless things are transmitting to the computer, or to the box and then the computer, is to be determined later.) and remote in the box.

Yes, yes, you could build something like this using wireless USB, but it's much pricier than it actually should cost, considering you need to buy a USB video card, which is rather shitty anyway. Something like this could just transmit straight video over one frequency, using an actual high-quality video card in the computer, and use wireless USB on another frequency.

At some point, when wireless USB becomes more common, the transmitter can stop doing that itself, too, and perhaps drop the USB hub from the other end also. Perhaps even have sound input instead of a USB sound card, so doesn't worry about wireless USB at all...computers would just be expected to have it, and you'd put a hub at your TV. It would come with some app that, when launched via hotkey, switches video and audio devices, so you press a key on either keyboard to switch.

I've looked it up, and for some reason HDMI extenders apparently cost $200, which is quite insane. This whole thing shouldn't cost more than $100, or with wireless USB $150.

Incidentally, the reason I'm thinking like this is because I do it...except I do it with wires. (And I'm using S-Video, because I have an SDTV.) One USB cable, one S-Video cable, both run 20 feet.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[Philomage]

But the major consoles are still ahead of PCs in how many simultaneous players a game will usually support.

Um, what? In the 80s, my 8-bit Atari 800 supported 8 players with joystick splitting on the 4 built-in joystick ports. How is anything less than that "ahead"?

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[tepples]

PCs have supported several USB gamepads since 1999, but most games won't read more than one. This appears to have something to do with the number of players that can fit around a monitor. Your Atari 800 computer had an SDTV output, documented in the manual, and game developers took advantage of it. PCs, on the other hand, don't have S-Video or composite out as a standard feature. Instead, they have VGA out, and monitors that take a VGA signal tended to be smaller than monitors that take an SDTV signal until the mid-2000s, when LCD HDTVs became popular. The public still hasn't realized that a PC can be connected to a TV, which is part of why PC game developers haven't targeted home theater PCs.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[tepples]

The PS3 has 128+ player games?

The PC doesn't have 128-player games. The network of 128 PCs has 128-player games. But I admit that I phrased that a bit poorly.

The console may support more simultaneous gamers on the same device, but if you actually look, most of them are single-player only.

Some genres lend themselves to single-player or online play, such as FPS and RTS. Others lend themselves to multiplayer, such as block stacking games, music games, fighting games, and games like Bomberman. These genres are underrepresented on PC.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[tycoex]

I agree, even with the wii's graphics, I wish it at least had 720p resolution. After playing something like little big planet for a few hours I can't play super mario bros without getting a headache from squinting at the seemingly fuzzy screen.

Re:Multiple independent "generations"

[Philomage]

I'm just getting nostalgic for the days when games were fun and not just competitive.

Re:I used to love PC gaming

[Jartan]

PC's may be generations ahead in hardware, but they still don't offer the convenience and simplicity of a console, which is why they are popular.

citation needed

PC's would be just as cheap and convenient if people would resist the urge to constantly upgrade. The reality is that when they get the ability to upgrade they chose to do so. I think the couch has far more to do with the success of the console frankly.

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Re:Captain Obvious

[SuricouRaven]

There's another thing to blame for the Wii's library limitation: Nintendo's marketing. Like Disney, the company is very dependant upon protecting their image as wholesome and family-friendly now, and must do their best to protect it from the taint of being associated with anything sexual or violent. So they are quite strict about what they allow to be published for the Wii. It's not entirely devoid of violent games, but it has fewer of them proportionally than the other major consoles. If you like U-rated games, on the other hand, it's got loads.

Re:Captain Obvious

[tepples]

They would also have to ship with a well designed controller (and not an after-thought)

Xbox 360 controllers work with Windows 7, Windows Vista, and recent service packs of Windows XP.

add onto that a fancy UI that is easy to navigate from the couch.

If XBMC can solve the 10-foot UI problem, surely Dell or Gateway can.

The problem with PCs as a game center is that every game is different.

PC games that carry the "Games for Windows" certification and support a gamepad must recognize Xbox 360 controllers and automatically configure the buttons.

Re:Enough with the emphasis on horsepower already

[Movi]

In many ways gaming has gone the way of hollywood. More flash, bigger budgets and more streamlined.

Re:Captain Obvious

[MachDelta]

It's not just you. I haven't touched my Wii in months. I haven't purchased a new game for it in over a year. The Wii is drowning in shovelware and it's pushed the "traditional" market far, far away. That's ok though, because the casual market is proving more than enough hookers and blow for Nintendo's shareholders. I can only hope that, come next generation, this somehow bites Nintendo in the ass... and hard.

Re:I used to love PC gaming

[WARM3CH]

Well, I did that in 2007. I noticed that a top of the line graphics card is almost as expensive as a whole game console! I was tired of constantly upgrading my PC. There was always something to add, something to upgrade and some more time to spend fixing this or that than actually using my PC for anything. I switched to a Tablet PC as my main computer, got rid of my desktop and got an Xbox 360. I selected a Tablet PC since it was, well, cool and also I was sure I couldn't do much about upgrading it. For 3 years since then I was mostly happy. However old habits don't die easily. I got tired of my under powered, dual-core 2GHz + 4GB tablet. I wanted something more from my Xbox 360. I wanted customizability of Unreal Tournament 2004 and large scale of Supreme Commander back. So two months ago I got myself a new desktop: a 3.2 GHz i7 with 12GB of RAM, SSD boot drive, 2x2TB HDD, HD5870, ... a monster of machine! Now my Xbox is only used to play street fighter IV with friends that come over and all new games are on PC. I don't know where my Tablet PC is and I don't care that much anymore. I also could go back to my other hobby, developing chess engines and throwing lots of hardware at it...

It took 4 years

[Henriok]

I'm not at all surprised that he believes that todays high end gaming rigs are one generation ahead of the consoles. They are four years old after all.. What a shocker. Pushing more pixels through a GPU doesn't constitute innovation though. What have Crytek done but yet another FPS? *yawn*

Re:It took 4 years

[MightyMartian]

It's also an issue of market. High-end game PCs make up only a small part of the whole PC market. If you indeed did make games that required the horsepower of a $2000 gaming machine, I doubt you would see much profit. Yes, technically consoles are a generation behind, but if you're looking at selling lots and lots of copies, you want stable hardware specs. Most PC games are probably sitting in the generation, or at least half-generation, behind the full throttle systems as well, simply because you want as large a market as possible, and so have to have at least some level of playability on mid-range PCs. The same rules apply.

I fail to see what hardware has to do with creativity anyways. Yes, better specs can certainly improve graphics, but that's only one piece of the puzzle.

Re:It took 4 years

[ADRA]

I think you'll find that any PC being sold the last few years has higher system specs than any console today as long as the PC was sold with any sort of discrete video card. I've got a PC that plays modern PC games and it cost me around $700. Because I can do so, much of that cost won't be renewed because I can reuse several of the pieces for my next generation or even the one after that.

"I fail to see what hardware has to do with creativity anyways"
Hardware doesn't in itself encourage creativity, but it sure can stifle it. If I want to create an amazing live action CG rendering of something fantastic and beautiful, it would suck if my engine supported a max of 10 objects on the screen at once. Bad example, but the analogy still applies. Unlimited hardware allows artists and designers a wider canvas to express themselves and the potential restriction of said expression is frustrating. Imagine you were Square developer making final fantasy XIII and your boss tells you: "Oh, by the way Yoshi, this has to run on a Wii since we decided to do a 3 console release." The designer would be rolling over in frustration, or else you'd have 15 DVD's with all pre-rendered scenes for everything, and the game can only be played on rails, etc..

Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gaming

[unity100]

its consoles. they are too locked in, and their companies do not put out new generations often. that is why the console market is dragging ALL gaming behind. developers are having to accommodate consoles that are a few years behind in technology.

not to mention the horrible, flat-out fascist attitude of the console producers towards any kind of free development, improvement, or modding on their devices.

really, it would be better if they are totally dropped.

How about some evidence

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yerli makes these sweeping statements... and then we have this:

Yerli's comments come alongside news of Crytek's announcement of a new military-based shooter called Warface.

Please tell me - how is all that extra PC horsepower being used in a way that's not possible on a console? I know all these "shoot people in the head" games are immensely popular... but come on! The same sorts of games exist on the XBox 360 and PS3 and look really, really good - so it's certainly not graphics performance or computations per second that's a limitation.

No, as others have pointed out: The limitation is the lack of creativity on the part of most developers. I can't blame them for going where the money is, but they need to at least put some thought into how their shoot 'em in the head game could set itself apart from the hundreds of other shoot 'em in the head titles already on the market. And, no - making the graphics slightly more realistic than the almost-lifelike games already out there is not a meaningful difference, nor is it innovative in the least.

Re:How about some evidence

[0123456]

The limitation is the lack of creativity on the part of most developers.

But that's largely because most games these days are developed for consoles, which means lowest common denominator design and limited in scope to be able to run on antiquated hardware.

Re:How about some evidence

[AHuxley]

Textures beyond 640p, world size, number of monsters, AI ect are all moving to the top end on a PC. You have to meet some min stats but the top end is open to the creativity and coders to really push the limits of what Windows and opengl can offer.
With a console all your doing is locking into 5 yr old tech and staying at a low level within that tech range.
A constant trade off rather than anything new to show off.
Your over hyped console cannot do "almost-lifelike games" without really dropping in many other areas.

Re:How about some evidence

[Khyber]

And they're developed for the lowest common denominator of people - consumers instead of creative producers.

Creative people tend use PCs because it lets them create, consumers that have very little use for creativity of their own use consoles. The console type FAR outnumber the PC type.

PC + HDTV = MAME heaven

[tepples]

how often have you gotten friends around the pc monitor for playing a fighting game together

One PC in my house is connected to the VGA input of a VX32L, is a 32" HDTV made by Vizio. Emulators run beautifully, but I'm tired of having to break the law just to play more than single player.

I have a desk set up for a single person for work and gaming and a tv with a sofa set up for multiple people.

Put a slim PC next to the TV. I saw a nice Gateway in Best Buy the other day when I was looking for an Archos 43 tablet.

Consoles lack the selection of a PC

[tepples]

I'm now a console gamer because its convenient.

But is it convenient for you when the game all your friends are talking about is a PC exclusive because the console makers turned it down?

PC's may be generations ahead in hardware, but they still don't offer the convenience and simplicity of a console

Nor do consoles offer the selection of a PC.

Re:Consoles lack the selection of a PC

[Skidborg]

Might I remind you that without PC games and Quake, there would never have been Team Fortress 2. PC games are where great ideas are created without a budget that rivals the US military. Of course they show up in their polished form on consoles, but not before us PC gamers have laid the ground work.

Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[tepples]

Like Disney, the company is very dependant upon protecting their image as wholesome and family-friendly now

Yet explain how a Disney subsidiary green-lit Kill Bill.

So they are quite strict about what they allow to be published for the Wii.

MadWorld anyone?

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[el3mentary]

Like Disney, the company is very dependant upon protecting their image as wholesome and family-friendly now

Yet explain how a Disney subsidiary green-lit Kill Bill.

I would have thought that was obvious, Miramax was bought by Disney in 1993 in order to allow them to release more adult orientated films without hurting their brand. A disney subsidiary green lit Kill Bill precisely because it was a subsidiary and not the main brand.

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[biryokumaru]

Wow you're dumb. It's called branding, and Disney is, like, the god of branding. That's why a Disney subsidiary released Kill Bill. The Disney name isn't on the movie.

I don't really know enough about the Wii to make a claim about Nintendo doing that same type of branding, but, fer christs sakes, Disney is a freaking god in that arena. I do know my Wii and the dozen crappy games I bought for it are going to be a Christmas present for my in-laws this year, and prolly a Christmas present for someone else the following year.

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[tepples]

Miramax was bought by Disney in 1993 in order to allow them to release more adult orientated films without hurting their brand.

So here comes the analogy: Why can't Nintendo likewise start a separate brand to release edgier games?

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[dakameleon]

Yet explain how a Disney subsidiary green-lit Kill Bill.

I think the key word there is subsidiary. It's not like you saw the Disney logo on the Kill Bill poster.

So they are quite strict about what they allow to be published for the Wii.

MadWorld anyone?

Yep, GP was posting with old stereotype in mind. The Wii is a little more grown up these days, though I guess there's something of a confirmation bias given the volume of less realistic-violence games on the console. The only thing that could possibly shake that perception for some out there would be seeing a CoD on the Wii.

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[Alphathon]

That's already happened - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex for Wii, Call of Duty: Black Ops for Wii

I've never played them, so I don't know how they compare to CoD on the HD consoles or PC, but they certainly exist. It's not really been heavily publicised though, so I doubt the kind of person that'd be swayed by it would know about it. Heck, a lot of people I know who're into CoD think it's a 360 exclusive purely because it plays the 360 logo animation, thing, at the end of the ads.

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[billcopc]

Disney didn't make your TV so the subsidiary doesn't care that Kill Bill is out on DVD. Contrast this with the Wii, where it matters not who made the game, it is known to its users as a "Wii Game", and thus has a direct association with Nintendo's brand and image. You play it on a Wii, it says "Nintendo" on the packaging... you get my drift.

Nintendo's kid-friendly image is a huge part of their business strategy, they automatically win all the overprotective parents who are terrified of the Xbox and its filth-laden Live service, where everyone and everything is a "nigger" and/or "faggot" according to its prominent users. I can't speak of the PS3 since I don't have one, but I would speculate that the it is not much different, due to being marketed to the same adult / hardcore crowd as the Xbox. Hell, there was a (shitty) game on the old Xbox where victory resulted in a "Girls-Gone-Wild" style clip being presented as your reward. You'll never see vodka-doused tits on a Nintendo console, that's for sure!

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[tehcyder]

Like Disney, the company is very dependant upon protecting their image as wholesome and family-friendly now

Yet explain how a Disney subsidiary green-lit Kill Bill.

I would have thought that was obvious, Miramax was bought by Disney in 1993 in order to allow them to release more adult orientated films without hurting their brand. A disney subsidiary green lit Kill Bill precisely because it was a subsidiary and not the main brand.

That doesn't sound evil enough on Disney's part. It can't be true.

Re:Walt Disney's Kill Bill

[Gizzmonic]

You'll never see vodka-doused tits on a Nintendo console, that's for sure!

Guess you forgot about BMX XXX, which was released uncensored on Xbox and Gamecube, but censored on the "adult-oriented" PS2.

Not to mention the extreme violence on Wii games such as Madworld, No More Heroes, etc. Do yourself a favor and stop repeating the "Nintendo is for kiddies only" meme. It's just not true anymore.

talking hardware here, not current games

[Nyder]

Think a lot of people are missing the point here.

They are talking about hardware, not what the current PC games compare to their console counter parts.

See, this is the problem. PC are capable of so more, yet we get a dumbed down console port instead of a game tailored to the extra stuff modern PC's can bring you.

Most PS3 & 360 games are barely 720p, usually less. Crappy AA on them, etc.

Modern PC can do the 1080p, max AA and not break a sweet. And not break your bank. Get a Nvidia 460 1gb card for $200 and you got yourself a nice card that kicks ass.

And yes, I'm a gamer. Been so for 30+ years. I prefer my PC for gaming (even got me 3D Vision, which rocks), but I do have a Xbox 360 (jtag'd), a Wii (softmodded) and will have a PS3 whenever I get enough money for it (ya, and I'll hack it also, because that's how i roll).

It's funny, because I remember when arcade games were the better graphics systems, and computers & consoles tried to be that good. Then the computers surpassed both the consoles & arcade games. And we, the computer gamers have been paying for it ever since.

(sorry, when the PS3 & 360 game out, their graphics weren't really on par with computers, they were already behind, and it's a bigger gap now).

Re:talking hardware here, not current games

[ADRA]

What really makes me sad these days aren't so much the graphical sacrifices that PC gamers have to suffer from, its the control limitations. Whenever I play Mass Effect, I feel like punching the developers, because its perfectly clear that whomever designed it was only targeting console game play mechanics.

Re:talking hardware here, not current games

[Nyder]

What really makes me sad these days aren't so much the graphical sacrifices that PC gamers have to suffer from, its the control limitations. Whenever I play Mass Effect, I feel like punching the developers, because its perfectly clear that whomever designed it was only targeting console game play mechanics.

I agree. I hate over the shoulder games. In fact, some of them make me sick to my stomach (Dead Space is one that does that).

I think they don't want to have people think the game is a first person shooter, when in reality, that is what the game is.

Re:talking hardware here, not current games

[Khyber]

Nope, probably next year, when AMD releases their Fusion APU, we'll have that graphical capability in a portable form factor.

Re:talking hardware here, not current games

[CronoCloud]

The reason you don't see lots of those is becaues "nerds" are a smaller portion of the gaming market. It's not like 1985 when a much higher proportion of computer gamers (even on the C64) had played Avalon Hill hes map tabletop games or pencil and paper D&D.

Re:talking hardware here, not current games

[balthan]

I feel the same way playing Fallout 3. The interface is crap for the PC. Why can't I type 'm' to bring up the map?

Re:talking hardware here, not current games

[BenoitRen]

Modern PC can do the 1080p, max AA and not break a sweet. And not break your bank. Get a Nvidia 460 1gb card for $200 and you got yourself a nice card that kicks ass.

What about the rest of the system? For some people, $200 for a video card is a lot. For the same price you can get a gaming console with some games.

Re:talking hardware here, not current games

[lidocaineus]

And here we come to the crux of the argument. I hear all these PC gamers whining and moaning about how console ruined everything and dumbed down their games. Well boo-fucking-hoo. Last time I checked, no one forced you to buy a PC and set it up to be a gaming machine. Last time I checked, you could see well ahead of time what was in the PC gaming pipeline and therefore make a decision on whether it offered you a good return on investment. I didn't buy an Xbox 360 expecting to be top of the line graphically for more than a short period of time; similarly, the writing on the wall's been there FOREVER.

Do I think that's cool? Hell no. I think PC games have suffered in certain areas, yes. But I'm not bitching about it, because that's what the market decided. If you want to change it, vote with your dollars, or set up your own game dev team and start coding the next huge PC only release that will light people's asses to buy PC hardware to run it and demand more like it.

I'm sorry to inform you of the obvious, but as soon as something goes mainstream (which gaming has done for years now), you're going to get a glut of money catering to the largest group out there. You. Are. A. Niche. Deal with it.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Cinder6]

I wasn't aware that Nintendo was still strict on what could appear on their system(s). Last I knew, they'd relaxed quite a bit; BMX XXX had the topless stuff in it, while it was censored on the PS2. Granted, I'm unaware of anything like that on the Wii or DS...

As an aside, I really hate how you have to click through the "health and safety tips" every time you turn on the Wii or DS. Put in the light of being "family-friendly", it makes more sense that it's been included. That, or Nintendo is even more terrified of lawsuits than other corporations.

The way it should be

[drej]

"(...)we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is."

The way it should be.

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[luther349]

you mean like 82 to 86 when the c64 was the domment gaming system and it was a pc. gotta rember consoles died in the early 80s. it wasn't until nintendo came alone with the nes that consoles got revived. and it wasn't no easy task for nintendo they tried for years before it got accepted by the usa people. gotta rember 30 million c64s where sold and that number still hasn't been beat for any single pc model to this day. so we have been there and done that with success. the problem now is we dont make soft where for each pc model anymore theirs to many different models out there. so they tend to try to taler to all of them for the last 3 years or so.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Lord Bitman]

I promise you it is not the graphics that stop me from playing games on the Wii.
It's the fucking awful games.
It's the controls.

Every Wii game I've played has come in one of two flavours:
  a) Trying to use the Wii-mote as advertised, the result being horribly awkward and ultimately impossible-to-enjoy inconsistent fumblings as the Wii really sucks at motion control.
  b) Games where the developers realized the limitations of the Wii, and compensated by making the controller a prop which doesn't actually do anything. "Let's pray pretend! Now you're a sorcerer! Here, hold this stick, it's a MAGIC WAND!" entertaining for five minutes, maybe, but once you realize that your moving the stick around doesn't actually have any more effect on game than sitting on the controller at the appropriate time, it loses its appeal fast. I can play pretend all by myself /without/ standing in front of a TV.

I have heard that WiiMotion+ improves greatly on what amounts to Nintendo saying it had a great idea for a console, then getting really hung over and writing its homework out in five minutes before class. I don't have a compelling reason to blow money on it, when apparently all it has going for it is "Makes Wii act like they said it would, on some new games designed for it." Especially when there's a new motion controller for another console which doesn't even need to make wild guesses about where your arms are.

Unless the game isn't for your console

[tepples]

I can slap a disc in a $300 box with no buttons, and play it.

Unless the game isn't for your $300 console. Imagine that your friend has recommended a PC game to you. You check the developer's web site to see if a version is available for your console, but you find that the developer has posted a rejection notice from the console maker. Various overheads associated with becoming an authorized console game developer are part of why indie games tend to be PC exclusive. Even among major-label games, many are exclusive to a console you don't have, and by the time you've bought all three consoles, you've spent more than a gaming PC costs.

Hundreds of dollars for video cards, extra memory, high-end CPU's? You gotta be kidding me.

Yeah, it is silly, especially when a $300 ION nettop with a GeForce 9400 GPU can run indie games, older games, and even some newer games at lower graphics settings.

Re:Unless the game isn't for your console

[CronoCloud]

Most indie games are derivative crap, you of all people should know this. If an indie want's to be a big time console developer...they have to DO THE WORK necessary to become one and not constantly whine that Nintendo doesn't hand out dev kits to every developer wannabe in a garage that wants one.

Re:Unless the game isn't for your console

[tepples]

If an indie want's to be a big time console developer...they have to DO THE WORK necessary to become one

If it's necessary, I'll do it. Can you recommend a guide to doing such work, so that I can include the cost of such work in a business plan?

Generational Gaps Depend on Niche or Mass Market

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree that there is a generational gap between true gaming PCs and consoles. That's always going to be the case. The upgrade and refresh cycles of gaming PCs are going to be much shorter than consoles. However, the console market is much larger than the true gaming PC market. In order to expand the market beyond this niche, game developers have to target "standard" PCs, and that is where the variability is hardware capabilities is an issue. If I develop a game for a console, every user is going to have essentially the same hardware (storage and peripherals may differ, but the core product is the same). Microsoft has tried to address this with WinSAT scores and games for Windows certifications, etc. However, at some point game developers have to compromise on a common denominator for hardware specs. To match the size of the console market, my guess is that the PC specifications would be comparable to or possibly less powerful than the latest generation of consoles (XBox 360, PS3).

Interesting

[vampirbg]

Maybe someone should tell him that it's the GAMEPLAY that matters, not flashy graphics. I never did like Crytek's games because they felt more like tech demos that real games. Also, consoles have one more advantage. If I want to play a game I just stick the disk in and that's it. No worries if my drivers are current, or if my combination of mb+graphics would cause a problem etc. Also it's much cheaper to be a gamer on the consoles. Sure, the games are more expensive but ask yourself how often do you have to upgrade you machine? I did it every 6-12 months and each time i spend around $500 on it (new mb, new graphics and usually a new cpu) just so I could play the latest games with details on max

Re:Interesting

[racerx509]

Maybe someone should tell him that it's the GAMEPLAY that matters, not flashy graphics. I never did like Crytek's games because they felt more like tech demos that real games.

Also, consoles have one more advantage. If I want to play a game I just stick the disk in and that's it. No worries if my drivers are current, or if my combination of mb+graphics would cause a problem etc. Also it's much cheaper to be a gamer on the consoles. Sure, the games are more expensive but ask yourself how often do you have to upgrade you machine? I did it every 6-12 months and each time i spend around $500 on it (new mb, new graphics and usually a new cpu) just so I could play the latest games with details on max

I take it you haven't played any of the newer consoles. The only system like this out of the box is the Wii. I"ve gone through 3 xbox 360 consoles and a ps3. Two of the 360s red ringed and the third began cutting rings in the bottom of the games. Even still, you have to go online for updates to the dashboard and some games want drive installs. The ps3, most games *require* drive installs, and/or online updates with GT 5 taking 30 minutes to install itself.

Consoles of yore were simpler and would work out of the box, but today's systems act more or less like PCs, only with worse graphics and DRM.

Bleh.

Re:Interesting

[Dutchmaan]

I did it every 6-12 months and each time i spend around $500 on it (new mb, new graphics and usually a new cpu) just so I could play the latest games with details on max

I bought a quad core i-7 with a Radeon 4890 a year ago, Cost me $1300 for a machine I intended to keep for quite a while. 12 months so far.. still maxed out on game detail.. don't expect to have to drop it down any time soon. I have nothing against consoles at all, I'm just a PC enthusiast. Consoles aren't the dream solution any more than PC's are. With consoles, sure you can just pop in a disk, provided it's not damaged, but if there are errors in a game.. thats it, deal with it. Consoles by and large are not upgradeable either, you have to have your machine until a new one is released by X company. When my power is starting to wane, I upgrade components, as it should be with a PC.

In short.. a PC's flexibility is both a strength and a weakness, just as a consoles simplicity and uniformity is both a strength and a weakness. Certain games are clearly better on consoles, others are clearly better on PC's. I know game makers would love to have nothing but consoles because they provide the most control over a product, but PC's aren't going anywhere any time soon, and thats a lot of computing power and a market for game developers to take advantage of.

Personally, I look forward to years of innovation on both platforms. Choice is always good, but there will always be fanboi's as well.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Cowar]

While i agree with your post at large, you shouldn't say this to anybody who has played a console newer than the ps2:

With consoles, sure you can just pop in a disk, provided it's not damaged, but if there are errors in a game.. thats it, deal with it.

Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas for the PC beg to differ. Also, i have seen far fewer bugs in 360 releases than in their corresponding PC ports. Also, 360 patches get priority and are (in my experience) released a few days before similar bug fixes are seen on the PC. This has to do with the inherent complexity of the PC environment and simplicity of the 360 monoculture.

Re:Interesting

[BenoitRen]

You don't have to buy games when they are released, you know. In that sense, console games are just as cheap (if not cheaper) as they go down in price in only a couple of months.

Re:Interesting

[MogNuts]

I'm going to re-post what I wrote above in a different thread:

I love how people always bring up Crysis when talking about good graphics and graphics ruining games. I have something to say to you all: you're all dead wrong.

Crysis was one of the most innovate FPS games of this decade, because of its technology. Crysis is as far beyond the normal FPS as Call of Duty is to House of the Dead.

Most FPS are simple. Take call of duty (insert # here):

The game is on rails
You kill people by either a gun or a knife melee attack
Done.

Crysis:

You can accomplish the mission by going anywhere on the entire island. There are multiple ways to do it. It's like saying fallout 3 is just a FPS.

And killing enemies:

I can shoot them
I can grab them and throw them into trees, rocks, over cliffs
I can lob a barrel and when its close, shoot the exploding barrel
I can jump on top of a building and destroy the roof, thereby collapsing the building and destroying the enemy
I can throw an object, the enemy will follow it to investigate, thereby creating a diversion, and then I can sneak up and kill him with melee or guns
I can hold and enemy, drag him away to not alert guards, and then off him away from alerting guards.

After years of FPS's, I was bored as crap. Oh boy, another FPS. Shoot, story event, shoot. Rinse, repeat. Crysis was the first FPS I wasn't bored of in like 10 years.

Could you do any of what Crysis did on a console? NO.

Re:Interesting

[MogNuts]

I also wanted to make two other comments.

1) I use Steam. I right click on install. It's done. The game plays. To un-install, I right-click and select "delete local content". Done.

God that's hard.

Ok let's make it tougher and assume you don't use Steam. Put in the DVD. Click install. Click 3-4 times. done. Holy crap that's hard! I hate to break it to you, but gone are IRQ configuring and playing with jumper settings.

2) Why the hell are you putting in $500 every 6 months? I play most games at max settings with a rig *4* years ago. An old dual core with a 4 year OLD 8800 GTS 512. Are you special?

And sure, that's a great idea: instead of lowering your detail settings, just quit entirely. Nevermind that even at lower details PC games look 4x better. And you do realize that the only reason you're able to play any game on an 360 is because you're playing the equivalent on a PC at a 800x400 resolution with all settings on low. Which you could do on any old PC today. But no, that would poke a hole in your uneducated strawman theory.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Again]

[snip]

(Or maybe I need to look harder?)

I agree with most of your points but there are some very good games for the Wii. Red Steel 2 is an incredibly fun game. I played that game shortly after finishing the campaign in Modern Warfare 2 and I have to admit that I had more fun with Red Steel 2. Monster Hunter for the Wii is another incredibly well made game and pretty much the only RPG on the Wii.

However, both of these games are outliers to the typical games released for the Wii. I recommend them if you own a Wii.

Maybe it is time that PCs learned from Consoles

[igreaterthanu]

A PC beats a Console in almost every way. It can play games just like a console, there are online stores like Steam, plus it has other features like word processing, etc. But why do people buy Consoles? Because they turn on fast and they work in your lounge easily! So someone needs to make a Desktop OS that also works well for lounge gaming and has instant on. Huge opportunity right there.

Re:Maybe it is time that PCs learned from Consoles

[am 2k]

Another difference is that PC games depend on a keyboard and a mouse, both of which don't work all that well while sitting on your TV couch.

Instant on isn't that large of a hurdle nowadays, since there's perfectly fine sleep support in all PCs.

Re:Maybe it is time that PCs learned from Consoles

[igreaterthanu]

You can buy Xbox 360 Controllers that come with Windows drivers and some games do support them, so the controller thing is more of a games supporting it issue.

Re:Maybe it is time that PCs learned from Consoles

[am 2k]

Game developers are very reluctant to support anything that's not shipped with the original product, since it reduces your target market considerably. Even the Wii Motion Plus has that issue.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Narishma]

They would need to do that in concert with all the other big manufacturers like Acer and Lenovo, as well as game developers. I would say Microsoft too but I doubt they would want to since it would be competition for their Xbox. They would basically agree on fixed specs for a cheap gaming PC that anyone could sell, and game devs would target it for their games. But I doubt anything like that could ever happen. There would be too much bickering about what brand of CPU or GPU to use, and with nobody big enough to impose stuff (like Microsoft) the thing would fail before it even started.

If You Say So...(re: What a load of garbage...)

[EXTomar]

So lets look at some games:

- "World of Warcraft" just had The Shattering which revamped the graphics and game flow of the world adopting tech and design they learned from 6 years of successful gaming.
- Steam just told me that "Poker Night at the Inventory" is available for cheap. Although it is basically a poker game, the fun part is the conversations and jokes in the game.
- "Farmville" is still going strong
- "Minecraft" would be a hard sell if not impossible on consoles

So yeah, if you say so. I don't think flashy and poorly coded are a PC feature but something that comes from the developer regardless of their target platform.

Wii Boxing

[sanman2]

I felt that one of the best Wii titles at launch was Wii Boxing, and it was precisely because of the motion controls, rather than the graphics. I still love playing Wii Boxing to work up a quick sweat, and I find it really improves your hand-eye coordination.

I'd love to see another game making use of Wii Boxing's punching mechanic. Perhaps a game like God Hand or something.

I'm thinking that Nintendo will launch a new console in 2011 no matter how many denials they're issuing, simply because then otherwise they have nothing new to show in the face of Kinect and Sony Move. I'd imagine it'll have noticeably better graphics than 360 or PS3.

Re:Wii Boxing

[Sancho]

Yeah, but that was practically a demo. I haven't tried Wii Punch Out--does it use a similar mechanic?

One of the things I really disliked about Wii Sports was that the motions you made only barely correlated with the motions your character could perform. Tennis is the best example of this--where you halt your swing determined what type of swing your character took (most people I knew tried to swing as though they were swinging a real tennis racket--which didn't work particularly well.) Most of those minigames had similar quirks.

Better, more precise motion might be useful. However I think that motion itself is vastly overrated. Between the difficulty with repeating the same motions precisely (the ability to do this separates the average person from sports players) and the difficulty of the Wii in interpreting your motions, I'll take discrete button presses any day.

Re:Wii Boxing

[Khyber]

Wii Punch-Out uses slightly different and more fine-tuned mechanics. Much better than the Wii Sports boxing.

Re:Wii Boxing

[teh kurisu]

Wii Sports Resort, which came bundled with more recent consoles and uses the MotionPlus accessory, is much better in this regard.

Re:DNAS error -103

[dakameleon]

Yeah, and I'd like unicorns too when I get around to learning how to ride a horse.

Timeliness matters. You can't "insist" on a community around a game existing at some arbitary point in the future, if only because developers & publishers have no control over the activity in the community once a game is released.

Some games are the type that you pick up, play, master, and move on. Some games aren't, and have a longevity in the community. Just because you can't "get around to becoming able to run" or "even consider buying" a game doesn't give you the right to demand the company behind it is still running matchmaking servers - you want to play 5 years after a game is released and there isn't a significant community playing it any more? too bad chump, should have thought about that 5 years ago.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Frnknstn]

My knee-jerk reaction is to say, "if you can't find something newly released and fun to play on the Wii, you aren't trying hard enough."

Still, I will bite: Why didn't you buy Monster Hunter Tri, Trauma Team or Kirby's Epic Yarn?

Re:Seriously?

[Haeleth]

A disc? How quaint. On the PC we have this cool thing called an "internet" that lets us buy a new game at the click of a mouse button, and play it shortly afterwards without even having to stand up. I haven't needed to visit a bricks-and-mortar game store in years. That's one thing to be thankful for today.

As for difficulty running them, I haven't had any compatibility problems since like 1998, and -- thanks in part to the crippling effect of obsolete console technology that we are supposed to be discussing -- the cost of a system that's capable of running all the latest games is no greater than the combined cost of the basic computer you need anyway plus a console.

But, hey, don't let cold facts get in the way of your fanboyism.

Re: Car Analogies

[Software Geek]

Hasn't someone told you that here on slashdot we only understand car analogies? Get out of here, and take your damned houses with you!

That was a car analogy. It was just a really sloppy one, because he was working under a deadline.

Re:Captain Obvious

[billcopc]

Nope, your eyes are fine. I also have a Wii, it's been sitting in a bag for at least a year. I don't even bother hooking it up anymore. The only game that I would care to play is Metroid, but I'm too lazy and the motion gimmick wore off very quickly. I used to lend it to friends and family, they'd play the bowling game or Raving Rabbids for a month, then give it back.

I even had it modded when I got it, but I can't even justify the minimal effort of downloading and burning a game. The few I did try were such garbage that it turned me off the console entirely. Crappy party games, crappy pixel-hunting games, crappy platformers. The platform started to feel like a flash game site, for 8-year olds, by 8-year olds. Meanwhile the X360 and trusty old PS2 get played at least weekly, along with the regularly scheduled WoW raiding and PC racing sims. Hell, I think I've played more Starcraft 2 in two months than Wii in four years. The platform just doesn't have any staying power, and few if any killer titles. Even the marios are ho-hum.

Fighting games don't split the screen

[tepples]

It may just be me, but how many people play 4 player split screens for games these days?

I just got done playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl with relatives. Fighting games and Bomberman-style games don't need to split the screen, but then I guess they fall into a similar category to your "platformer type games". This category is way underrepresented on PC.

I thought it was bad during the time when tube TV's were standard

In the tube era, one had four 144x112 pixel windows on the N64 or four 288x224 pixel windows on the GameCube or Xbox. But now we're in the 720p era, and we end up with four 640x360 pixel windows: far less squinty.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"Windows game"

[tepples]

Disney didn't make your TV

Analogy != perfect. I've seen Disney licensed TVs in Wal-Mart stores. These are 13" or thereabouts and apparently intended for a child's room. I've also seen Disney licensed DVD players.

Contrast this with the Wii, where it matters not who made the game, it is known to its users as a "Wii Game", and thus has a direct association with Nintendo's brand and image.

Do Windows games have a direct association with Microsoft's brand?

You play it on a Wii, it says "Nintendo" on the packaging

In that case, Nintendo made its own bed by using lockout chips to shut out unlicensed software.

Re:"Windows game"

[imakemusic]

Are you deliberately trying to miss the point?

A console's reputation is affected by the games that run on it - whether they are made by the same company that makes the console or by a third-party company.

Television as a medium has a certain reputation because of all the programs shown on it, even though they weren't made by TV Inc. XBox has a reputation because of all the war played games on it (which in turn have brought all the faggot/nigger-shouters).

Hypothetical: If Nun Rape 2 came out on Wii then it would become known as a Wii game, whether or not Nintendo made it. It isn't a matter of lock out chips or anything like that, it's the fact that the box will say "Nun Rape 2 - For Nintendo Wii. Now with extra sodomy!" Parents would see that and immediately stop associating the Wii with Cute Puppy Fun Time 1-6 and Flower Arranger Hero and think of it as a tool of the devil corrupting our young.

Windows isn't as closely associated to games because games are only a part of what you can do on Windows.

Re:"Windows game"

[Supurcell]

Disney didn't make your TV

Analogy != perfect. I've seen Disney licensed TVs in Wal-Mart stores. These are 13" or thereabouts and apparently intended for a child's room. I've also seen Disney licensed DVD players.

Disney also puts its name on clothes and everything else imaginable, but it's still known for making kids' cartoons.

Contrast this with the Wii, where it matters not who made the game, it is known to its users as a "Wii Game", and thus has a direct association with Nintendo's brand and image.

Do Windows games have a direct association with Microsoft's brand?

No they don't, because Windows has a multitude of uses besides gaming, but Microsoft sure wishes that people would associate games directly with them. They wish it so much that they actually created a dedicated piece of hardware that only played video games. Now people do associate video games with the Microsoft Xbox.

You play it on a Wii, it says "Nintendo" on the packaging

In that case, Nintendo made its own bed by using lockout chips to shut out unlicensed software.

Yes, Nintendo did make its own bed out of solid gold bullion and wove a comforter out of million dollar bills.

Re:"Windows game"

[tepples]

Windows isn't as closely associated to games because games are only a part of what you can do on Windows.

Then I guess Sony sort of had the right idea with "It Only Does Everything" to break the exclusive association of the PLAYSTATION 3 platform with games.

Re:"Windows game"

[tehcyder]

"Nun Rape 2 - For Nintendo Wii. Now with extra sodomy!"

So that's what the nunchuck is for.

Indie games and mods

[tepples]

AC wrote:

Did you just insinuate that there are a lot of exclusive PC games that people would like to play?

I hope that was sarcastic, because other comments to this article praise the indie game scene and games with mods that extend their replay value. Both of these tend heavily toward PCs due to console makers' policies. Had Half-Life been a console game, for example, there couldn't have been a Counter-Strike.

PC vs. 360: mods and indie games

[tepples]

why bundle a custom miniPC with a 360 Controller advertising "Games for Windows" that support the 360 controller... When Microsoft has already done exactly what you just stated.

Because Xbox 360 games don't have the sort of mods that PC games have. And though XNA is a great improvement over the nothing that the other two console makers provide, it's still reportedly a very limiting environment for indie game development compared to targeting Windows.

The Xbox 360 is literally a custom PC

The original Xbox was a customized PC. Xbox 360 is much different; the only link is that the operating system is based on Windows and DirectX.

(XBMC stands for XBox Media Center I believe ;) )

It used to. Now it officially stands for nothing. It supported the modded original Xbox first but no longer supports that platform. To my knowledge, it never supported Xbox 360.

Performance rating in Windows Vista

[tepples]

They would basically agree on fixed specs for a cheap gaming PC that anyone could sell

That's what the "performance rating" in Windows Vista and Windows 7 was supposed to be.

Sturgeon's Revelation

[tepples]

Some games are the type that you pick up, play, master, and move on. Some games aren't, and have a longevity in the community.

Theodore Sturgeon's revelation: Ninety percent of video games are crud. I want to make sure that the ones I play are among those that aren't crud.

Re:Sturgeon's Revelation

[The End Of Days]

Well, all you'll need to do is learn how to predict the future - or dictate that your opinions are the only ones that count.

Somehow I suspect you're fucked, but at least your complaints will be semi-entertaining.

Why isn't there a HTPC gaming market?

[Dr. Spork]

If Microsoft is smart, their next Xbox will just be an standard PC running Windows 8 or maybe even some modified Windows 7 on an x86 processor. If they do this, Xbox(future) games will also run on a regular PC, and their future controllers (like Kinect, rock band gear, etc) will also work with ordinary PCs. I'm suggesting this because many people are getting living room PCs. Microsoft makes money from games, not game systems. So why not just target the PCs that are already in our living rooms? Then there doesn't have to be a separate Xbox port, which would really incentivize publishers to develop for the PC. To take care of the fact that generic PCs have different capacities, MS should just release a simple app that gives your PC a game hardware score, and then you can compare that number to what's on the back of the game box to see if your PC can play it. There are many benefits to MS from this move. One is that it puts Windows in more places and tightens their grip on the OS market. Another is that it cuts off the oxygen from Sony, because smaller developers will want to aim at the big, familiar PC/Xbox market and ignore boutique RISC systems. Basically, I don't see a good reason to keep a separation between PC games and console games.

Re:Why isn't there a HTPC gaming market?

[tepples]

Microsoft makes money from games, not game systems. So why not just target the PCs that are already in our living rooms?

Because then people would just make and self-publish PC games without paying Microsoft for "Xbox" or "Games for Windows" certification. And the hooks for debugging Windows applications make it easier to write a working aimbot for a PC game than for a console game.

MS should just release a simple app that gives your PC a game hardware score

This exists in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Why isn't it used? Probably because a lot of the market still uses Windows XP.

smaller developers will want to aim at the big, familiar PC/Xbox market and ignore boutique RISC systems.

Would you consider the ARM-powered devices that run Android or iOS to be "boutique RISC systems"?

Basically, I don't see a good reason to keep a separation between PC games and console games.

Consoles have larger monitors than PCs. Most PC users either A. own only an SDTV, B. aren't aware that they can plug a PC into the back of almost any LCD or plasma HDTV, or C. don't have a spare PC for the TV room. So you're not going to get something like Super Smash Bros. Brawl on a PC because it's hard to crowd four people holding gamepads around a 17" monitor.

Re:Why isn't there a HTPC gaming market?

[Dr. Spork]

Hmm, it's hard to find anyone using a monitor with a worse resolution than their living room TV. I'm certainly not. Well, maybe on my laptop.

The point about the amibot is interesting. It's something I didn't think of. I figured a part of what's happening is an attempt to control game piracy by forcing the use of locked down hardware. Honestly, I don't know how well that's working, though I don't know anyone who burns their own Xbox disks, so maybe they're on to something.

Sorry but I call bullshit on your bullshit

[Sycraft-fu]

Look man there is nothing wrong with liking gameplay. I am a full supporter of the "games need to have good gameplay" idea. However there is also no need to hate on graphics, which seems to common on Slashdot. A kind of techno luddism. "Oh these games would be just as good with older graphics on low end hardware." No, sorry, but that is false. A game is a rich experience. Part of that experience is visuals and good visuals go a long way to making that experience immersive.

So holding gameplay up as the One and Only Thing is no more valid than holding up graphics as the One and Only Thing. Also, guess what? There's more that a PC offers than just graphics. A big one that DOES relate to gameplay is memory. If you want to have a game with a big world, with a lot that goes on, memory is needed. This is part of the reason that the PC still sees the best strategy titles (keyboard and mouse are another). 512MB that you have to share with the video card, or 256MB that you don't (360 and PS3 respectively) is awful tight to try and store a big, active, world in. A PC can easily give you a gig or more for your dedicated use.

I agree that Crytek needs a bit of STFU since their gameplay is for shit they are graphics-only game makers. However let's not get up on the "Fuck graphics," techno-luddism crap. I play many games from many eras. I emulate old games from my youth, I play current high end games. While a good story (where applicable) and fun gameplay are key, good graphics and sound are great too.

Wolfenstein 3D is probably forever the most innovative 3D shooter since it invented the genre. However I'm sorry, but some of its less innovative modern counterparts are far better. Call of Duty 4 was a great game, and part of that was the wonderful graphics and sound. You couldn't do that game on a 286 like Wolf3D. Cut all the graphics, sounds, AI, levels, and so on back to what was required and the game wouldn't even be the same thing.

Progress on ALL fronts in game design is a good thing. Also holding "innovation" meaning doing something that has never been done before, up as the be-all, end-all is also silly. It is hard to be truly original and that isn't really a bad thing. We as a species have imagined a lot of thing, and there is nothing wrong with building on what is out there. Even most innovative things do. They are more original than some things, but you can still point out heavy influence from past works and other media.

I have to agree with Crytek that PCs have it better when it comes to games. They can do any console game out there that someone bothers to port and can do it higher resolution, higher FPS, better graphics and so on. They can also do titles the consoles can't. Look at Civilization 4 and 5 vs Civilization Revolutions. You can't do the full Civ games on a console, they lack the memory to handle it (among other things).

Re:Sorry but I call bullshit on your bullshit

[NeutronCowboy]

I'd like you to point out in my post the place where I argued that graphics do not matter. To save you the hunt: I didn't. What I called bullshit on is Yerli's claim that innovation - specifically, creative innovation - requires a high-end PC, therefore cannot be done on current consoles, and therefore technology is limiting the creativity of the industry at large.

Case in point: I actually disagree with you regarding CoD and Wolfenstein. Let's take Halo and Doom though, because I actually played Halo a lot more than CoD, and because I think that Doom brought the modern shooter along, not Wolfenstein. The AI is still dumb as rocks, and only marginally better than what was in Doom (woo, enemies run from you!). The levels are actual 3D instead of 2D, which makes for more interesting ambush situations. However, a lot of Halo maps do not take advantage of that. This is a particularly evident in the single player campaign. The only sound I need is the sound of a rifle going off and that of footsteps behind me. Because of that, I play on just a shade above mute. Sound is pretty irrelevant in a shooter, and hasn't evolved much beyond being positional. Hit boxes are more accurate, but that barely matters in single-player, and only somewhat in multi-player. Other than that, I play Halo (both single- and multi-player) very much like Doom. You can argue that that is a problem with Halo, and you have a point there. But I didn't see anything in CoD or MAG that was significantly better. So yes - take away the AI, the 3D in level design, the sound, the graphics, and you end up with a game that is still functionally the same. Is the shiny game overall better? Hell yes. Is it more innovative? No.

As for Civ 4/5 vs Civ Rev, the big changes were driven by two things: a joypad is a lousy replacement for a keyboard/mouse combo, and console gamers are generally less likely to be of "just one more turn sort" than PC gamers. There are some (I am one of them), but definitely less than those who game on PCs. Civ 4's requirements fit comfortably into the XBox 360 specs.

A long post just to correct the misunderstanding that I say poop to all graphical advancement. I like shiny as much as the next guy - but I know full well that the innovation behind that is purely technical, not creative. Yerli is off his rocker if he thinks his game design is constrained by the power of consoles or PCs.

Re:Sorry but I call bullshit on your bullshit

[BenoitRen]

So holding gameplay up as the One and Only Thing is no more valid than holding up graphics as the One and Only Thing.

Actually, it is. A game with great gameplay and bad graphics is a better game than one with great graphics and bad gameplay.

Ok

[Sycraft-fu]

How about large game worlds? Consoles, with their tiny memory amounts, put real limits on that kind of shit. As an interesting study in this, look at Deus Ex 1 vs Deus Ex 2. DX1 was PC only, running on Unreal Engine 1. Levels were more or less large, continuous, zones. You'd start and just walk around the whole thing, no loading. Also it wasn't streaming, the whole level was active, NPCs moved around freely and did things off camera. DX2 was designed for consoles, using Unreal Engine 2. Despite being a number of years later and requiring better hardware, the zones are tiny. You are in a little area and have to move through doors or other interlocks to reach a new one. The reason is that the Xbox, which it also ran on, had only 64MB of memory. Zones had to be kept small to fit in that.

Now you can fake this, to a degree, with streaming. Stream the data from disc as needed. But you can't have a truly free world where everything is loaded and active all the time. Look at Grand Theft Auto 3 or Vice City. You discover that other than special objects, like police chasing you or cars for missions, nothing exists that is out of your FOV. Look at a street, turn around, then turn back. It changes because it is regenerated. Again, done because of the small memory on the PS2 which it also runs on.

These are gameplay affecting things. A designer has to engineer around that limit rather than making the game as they want.

Also I'm sorry, but graphics have a long way to go. They are good, but they aren't fooling me they are real. Until that day, more power is needed. The limit should be the imagination, not GPU power. As a minor example, take resolution. The consoles are only 720p devices (1280x720). Yes, they do basic upsampling but you gain no detail with that. Other than a few rare PS3 games (which suffer in therms of textures and so on because of it) that run at 1080, they all run at 720, and sometimes even less.

On a PC you can do far more. I like my 1920x1200 gaming, but really I want more. I want smaller pixels on a bigger display. I want the beyond 2k screens that are out there (2560x1600) and I want it at a smooth 60fps. PCs can handle that, generally, with high end hardware.

Of course past just resolution there are plenty of other things that could be made to look better too.

The idea that what we have now is "good enough" is silly. You could say that of any time in the past, but then when presented with somethign better, suddenly that better thing is rather nice.

Re:Ok

[CronoCloud]

How about large game worlds? Consoles, with their tiny memory amounts, put real limits on that kind of shit. As an interesting study in this, look at Deus Ex 1 vs Deus Ex 2. DX1 was PC only, running on Unreal Engine 1.

Deus Ex 1 wasn't PC only, it was on the PS2 as well.

Also it wasn't streaming,

Streaming worlds is smart, it enables you to have HUGE worlds with 0 load times between zones, like EQOA on the PS2. You could walk/swim from Fayspires to Qeynos and never see a load screen. Who cares if things out of your FOV don't exist and are regenerated.

The consoles are only 720p devices (1280x720). Yes, they do basic upsampling but you gain no detail with that. Other than a few rare PS3 games (which suffer in therms of textures and so on because of it) that run at 1080, they all run at 720, and sometimes even less.

Citation needed.

Re:Ok

[BenoitRen]

Not everyone is a graphics whore demanding better than 1080p. Remember that. Current generation graphics are expensive enough to create as it is.

Re:Ok

[vgerclover]

Zelda: Ocarine of Time and even Zelda 3: Link to the Past had huge worlds that even now most games don't come close to.
Regarding streaming, I don't see why it's important that a pedestrian on the other side of the city be on memory and managed by the AI, it's a game, not a simulation.
And I take a good gameplay game over a good graphics game every day. (Having said that, Zelda on an emulator in HD running fullscreen is incredible.)

Re:Ok

[GameboyRMH]

Crysis 1 maxed-out is pretty close to Beowulf-quality graphics - I've already fooled a few people into thinking the game was a real, live-action movie.

I think DMC4 could have had similar quality, some of the environments (like the opening cutscene in the cathedral) look incredibly real, the main thing that keeps it from tricking people like Crysis is the art style - the humans look sort of anime-ish and their faces don't seem to have the same detail as Crysis characters.

Re:Ok

[UnknownSoldier]

Mod parent up.

Couple of points to add about resolution:

- Resolution is not the complete picture; we simply "need" more GPU processing power. A graphics programmer who worked on Uncharted 2 (one of the best looking PS3 games available) shares his comments on the future of GPUs / Rendering ... (Anybody who has been to SigGraph will say the same thing.)
http://filmicgames.com/archives/467

- Resolutions such as 2k rendering are _currently_ less of an issue (i.e. 1680x1050 is perfectly fine for gaming with max details -- increasing the res up by 17% to 1980x1080 doesn't make the image look 17% better :), but resolution _will_ become more important when you want to drive a ~ large, say 60", display. Ideally you would want ~ 300 dpi, so you will "want" 16 K x 8192 K resolution -- for a number of reasons:

  1) you can split the video signal to multiple monitors,
  2) you can upscale it to ~ 100" and it doesn't look pixelated / blurry to hell due to bi / tri linear up-scaling. Monitors will one day be "embedded" into the wall (think LCD paint...), with those kind of resolutions, we're going to need to start thinking differently about how we composite our real-time images ....

Computers are still too dam slow. I would say the bigger problem is the 4 GHz barrier of Silicon that doesn't have a cheap (near-term) solution.

Cheers

Re:Ok

[petermgreen]

Look at Grand Theft Auto 3 or Vice City. You discover that other than special objects, like police chasing you or cars for missions, nothing exists that is out of your FOV. Look at a street, turn around, then turn back. It changes because it is regenerated. Again, done because of the small memory on the PS2 which it also runs on.
OTOH without some form of regneeration in a game like that (not sure what the 2D GTAs were like) the entire city would grind to a halt from the mayhem the player left behind.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Pinky's Brain]

I do think a standardized design open to all manufacturers would be the way to go, but I don't think they'd need all game developers ... just Valve and a couple of big titles. If they had a special section(s) on Steam for games with some QA done to insure it works well with the system/controller/widescreen displays/etc it would convince other developers to do the little extra work (I say sections because eventually they might want to release different versions of the box).

Ideally the system would use virtualization, so users can't fuck up the ability to play games (so the root OS running the games would be maintained by internet updates from the manufacturer and users would use a separate OS they could fuck up to their hearts content without breaking the ability for the box to play games, expert users might be provided with a way to boot into a traditional windows install with the full ability to fuck up the system).

I think Valve should get together with Acer and/or Dell and do this right now ... they can't rely on Microsoft to make PC gaming less of a clusterfuck, they are completely schizophrenic in their intent for PC gaming (because they have conflicting goals, PC gaming sells windows and competes with XBOX at the same time).

Re:Captain Obvious

[Chuck Chunder]

and must do their best to protect it from the taint of being associated with anything sexual or violent. So they are quite strict about what they allow to be published for the Wii.

The machine-gun toting, lingerie wearing prostitute sidekick I had working alongside me in The Godfather: Black Hand Edition suggests otherwise. (Incidently I think that game is still has best usage of motion controls in a Wii game).

I don't think you can blame Nintendo really. I think the problem stems from a lot of third parties giving the Wii a wide berth early on in it's life. "Cool" devs (and perhaps gamers) saw it as underpowered and steered clear. By the time they started to pay attention to the amazing number of units being shipped the perception of the Wii already set and gamers who wanted access to more adult games had given up waiting and gone and bought and Xbox.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say the main problem with the Wii is its library.

The Wii has a great library of games for people who are into the types of games that Nintendo makes. Maybe not for everybody, but there's certainly a place for it. You can call it "kid stuff," but I'm an adult who has a three inch beard and a gun collection and Mario Galaxy 2 is one of my favorite games of all time.

Control scheme is the reason

[blankoboy]

I have said it before and I'll say again: a keyboard and mouse is far superior to a simplistic gamepad in most types of games (platforming aside). I cannot even bother to pick up a game pad for an FPS as it is to sad an experience. This will never change.

Re:Control scheme is the reason

[Mike Mentalist]

I have said it before and I'll say again: a keyboard and mouse is far superior to a simplistic gamepad in most types of games (platforming aside). I cannot even bother to pick up a game pad for an FPS as it is to sad an experience. This will never change.

A gamepad is fine for FPS games. I can switch between playing Halo Reach and Black Ops without any issues at all.

It all depends on what you are used to.

Nintendo has actually been sued

[tepples]

I really hate how you have to click through the "health and safety tips" every time you turn on the Wii or DS. Put in the light of being "family-friendly", it makes more sense that it's been included. That, or Nintendo is even more terrified of lawsuits than other corporations.

Perhaps it's because Nintendo has actually been sued over this.

Consoles jump several generations at a time

[George_Ou]

Consoles jump several generations at a time and they generally like to keep the platform for as long as possible on the order of 5-8 years. When they do jump, they jump one generation ahead of PCs at a tremendous loss in money for every unit sold. One to two years later, the PC catches up but it keeps jumping generations every one to two years an it inevitably jumps ahead of the console. But when the next console upgrade happens, it will jump ahead again.

Re:Consoles jump several generations at a time

[Beelzebud]

Actually that's not true at all. When the Xbox 360 was released you could already get graphics cards for the PC that had more capabilities. Same goes for PS2, PS1, N64, Xbox1, and every other console. There hasn't been one console released that was better than the current generation available on PC.

Re:Consoles jump several generations at a time

[Doctor_Jest]

Indeed, the PC had the capacity to be ahead, but in terms of already sold PCs, the gap wasn't so far. It was, as a platform, much more capable, but those PCs already in the pipe were not so powerful. Your point still stands though, but as we've seen even in the PC world, the plateau of realism has been the "chicken & egg" problem with PCs (and now it has shown up on consoles). Games can only get so "real" before people aren't as interested in the upgrade escalator if it's only going to give a smaller and smaller percentage of realism.

I mean, the leap from Wolfenstein 3D to Doom to Quake was considerable, noticeable, and quantifiable. The leaps from Crysis to Crysis 2 are more subtle, and less of a leap for the masses to see, and quite frankly, probably won't "wow" them like the leaps from sprites to 3D.

Which is why I think (and this is just my opinion) that Nintendo's strategy worked SO well this generation. Couple a unique control scheme to a less powerful console (and focus on the fun and casual), and clean up at the cash register. Is it a good long-term strategy? I don't know, but they seem to be doing alright, even with flat sales (the sales numbers couldn't be sustained anyway)... I mean, the DS, the Lite, the DSi, the DSi XL... now the 3DS (well soon)... they're not going for gigaflops. They're going for reasonably priced tried-and-true gameplay. Platformers, etc are their bread and butter.

Maybe the Wii2 will not be as successful, but I am not confident that the PS4 and XBox720 will be a huge leap in tech and realism either.

Re:Consoles jump several generations at a time

[grumbel]

you could already get graphics cards for the PC that had more capabilities.

Yeah, but you couldn't buy games that made use of them. The problem with the PC isn't raw power, it never was. The problem is that hardly anybody has the latest and greatest, thus PC games have to be developed to scale down to some lowest common denominator and thus all that extra power can only be used for decoration, not for gameplay critical stuff. On top of that it is impossible to optimize PC games to the same degree as console games, so you burn quite a good chunk of that extra power just due to lack of optimizations. And of course the PC that can beat a console on launch day will cost you well beyond the thousand dollar mark, while you can buy the console for a few hundred.

Re:Consoles jump several generations at a time

[toddestan]

I'd have to disagree about the N64. It predated the original Voodoo card by several months, which is pretty much the first consumer 3D card that could be considered comparable to the capabilities of the N64.

Re:Captain Obvious

[jonwil]

If you want proof that a console made by an unknown name would fail in the marketplace, jsut look at the Sega Dreamcast. Made by Sega (one of the big names in the business) and it was still a dismal failure (enough of a failure that it caused Sega to exit the console market entirely)

The Dreamcast just couldn't secure backing from the big publishers who were more interested in the then-new Playstation 2 from Sony (which had backwards compatibility with almost the entire library of Playstation 1 titles)

Re:Captain Obvious

[jonwil]

Nintendos policies on the Wii dont help matters.
Things like Friend Codes and all the other restrictions Nintendo places on developers that Sony and MS do not.

Re:Captain Obvious

[puto]

You never saw the Blackhole did you? 1979. Hardly a nice movie. Or Trenchcoat.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Khyber]

"the only problem with Wii is the really old graphics."

You must not own any Wii games, then. RE4 was good looking besides the fact they had to drop everything to 16-bit color depth to maintain framerates. DBZ: BT3 looks great (but then again cell shading tech can only go so far and Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 looks about the exact same quality-wise to DBZ on the Wii.

You must only be looking at games like Cooking Mama or older Mario games, because I own a TON of great-looking Wii games. In fact, the Wii gets more use than my PS3.

Re:Captain Obvious

[walshy007]

but the "traditional" gaming segment is more or less left out.

Depends how you define traditional. I have a wii and xbox 360, and the xbox only ever occasionally sees use as a dvd player, that's it. On the wii however I have about two dozen games or so.

That being said metroid prime 3 by far interested me more than halo 3 which I tend to find a bore, same with most other games of that sort, even gta 4 I find to be a serious let down.

You may call them 'kiddy' games, but really what is so mature about wanting to fake shoot up a neighbourhood? Hell even stuff like mercury meltdown beats that kind of tripe.

The only people I find not liking the wii tend to be the ones who grew up with the xbox and ps2 demanding sex/drugs and violence. Those who are content with puzzles/platforming/uniqueness tend to not mind the wii.

Yes there is lots of shovelware, but there always is for the most popular platform, case in point ps2.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Khyber]

"Monster Hunter for the Wii is another incredibly well made game and pretty much the only RPG on the Wii."

What the hell are you talking about?

http://www.wiisworld.com/wii-games/RPG/

PC Games may be a generation ahead

[scourfish]

However I have a hard time plopping down $1000+ for a gaming PC when games on a $300 xbox or playstation look only marginally worse.

Re:PC Games may be a generation ahead

[Wildclaw]

However I have a hard time plopping down $1000+ for a gaming PC when games on a $300 xbox or playstation look only marginally worse.

However I have a hard time spending $300 on an xbox/playstation when I can buy a $100 graphic card for my PC and get graphics that looks marginally better than any console.

Re:PC Games may be a generation ahead

[Karlprof]

Well you can get a perfectly capable gaming PC for $800, and you can save money in the long term by upgrading individual parts instead of buying a whole new console. Also PC games are often much cheaper than their console equivalents. So I think really it's not true that it's much more expensive to be a PC gamer. :)

Re:Captain Obvious

[Cinder6]

I never said I thought shooting up cities was mature. What I do want are games with more complex themes than "rescue the princess". For the most part, what I've seen on the Wii are a lot of simple games that are kid-friendly. Now, don't get me wrong--these games can be fun, but sometimes I want something with more substance to it. Something like Heavy Rain, Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption, or Dragon Age. He'll, even Ratchet and Clank is more mature than many Wii games.

It's the same reason I don't only watch Pixar movies.

And before somebody comes in with random examples of mature Wii games: I know they exist. But they aren't the norm, and you have to wade through the family stuff and the junk in order to find them.

My experience as a developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a lot of truth to this.

I worked on an EA title once. Everything was going fine until one of the higher ups panicked, afraid that we weren't going to meet our launch date, and took charge. The first matter of business was to reduce the bug count. This was accomplished by simply not reporting any new bugs (save for bugs that would cause us to fail cert). A lot of the cert bugs were silly things that most users wouldn't notice or care about, but they took precedent over everything else. Under my producer's instructions, I regularly packaged numerous bug fixes into single changelists, since we were only permitted to submit changelists pertaining to specific bugs (and had to cite them). I also successfully petitioned to get a few non-cert bugs fixed for the more serious issues.

The crazy thing is in the month leading up to cert, I had very little to do. I wasn't allowed to fix anything. I had about two dozen changelists that they simply wouldn't let me submit - regardless of how simple or safe the bug fixes were, or how serious the bug was. I held onto them, but they never made it into any patches either. They simply did not care about the quality of the game. It was all about getting it out the door.

Re:Captain Obvious

[BenoitRen]

This is a case of "the grass is greener on the other side". If you didn't have the PS3 and Xbox 360 to compare to, you wouldn't complain. Did you think the Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube or Xbox graphics were lacking? I don't think so, yet they are of lower quality than the Wii's.

Re:Captain Obvious

[BenoitRen]

(Or maybe I need to look harder?)

I think you do. Here's a partial list:

• A Boy and His Blob
• Arc Rise Fantasia
• Excite Truck
• Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon
• Ghost Squad
• The House of the Dead: Overkill
• Klonoa
• Kororinpa
• Little King's Story
• Muramasa: The Demon Blade
• No More Heroes
• No More Heroes 2
• Opoona
• Rayman Raving Rabbids
• Rune Factory Frontier
• Sin & Punishment: Star Successor
• Sonic and the Secret Rings
• Sonic Colours
• Sonic Unleashed
• Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
• Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars
• Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga
• Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

Nothing news here, just that time in the cycle

[jabjoe]

This happens with every generation of console. When they come out they are great (a fixed standard of decent hardware), but by the end of their life span, they are looking pretty rubbish against even a moderate PC. Not long after that really starts to be a problem, a new console is announced and not long after that, released. Then the cycle starts again. No nothing new here at all.

Re:Captain Obvious

[rekrowyalp]

I was in japan a couple months ago, played a fucking awesome wii fps. [snip] Probably helped that I was drunk and a cute girl was giving me a blowjob at the time (^_^)

This was clearly a dream

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[unity100]

come on dont sweat it too much. you know that we are talking about from 1993-94 to present.

Untrue today

[aepervius]

What yous aid about having to upgrade was true 5 years 10 years ago, but not today. I have a machine which is two year old and it crank high FPS without a hitch, except on 2 games (FF14 MMO, and Fallout new vegas, and the last one I am wagering it is a bug). I don#t plan to upgrade in the next time, because I have *NO* reason, even game sold today I can crank at high settings and still get a good FPS. So your 6 month upgrade cycle is outdated.

And PC gaming is cheaper on a game by game basis. Average price of PC game I bought : 39. Average price of console game I bought : 59. That is 20 PER GAME. After 10 game i can buy the mega super shiny upgrade new graphic card *if I wanted*. As for driver being current, I haven't had a problem with that for years. Vista automatically upgrade my drivers.

Can you say MEMORY

[SmallFurryCreature]

Consoles have always had a simple weakness. Memory. Developers love it, consoles don't have it.

Netbooks now come with 2GB. The PS3 comes with 512mb. That is all, video and main memory and in some ways it really only 256mb. When was the last time you had a computer with 256mb main memory? Or for that matter a 256mb video card? Oh okay, my current netbook has but then I would hardly call it a gaming machine.

A perfect example was Morrowind, it performed horrible on the PC at first with frequent loading between "zones". Until a PC only expansion was added which increased the memory usage. Foila, no more loading. The original game had been designed with the console in mind and so was extremely conservative with the amount it used.

Games like Fallout 3 show it as well. My DUAL core PC not only has higher resolution textures by default, it can even run smooth with insanely high definition user made textures. That is a DUAL core PC, two cores are better then 6(or 3 I believe for the x-box)? Why yes, because while the consoles are chugging along with constant streaming from a slow HD, my humble PC just has it in memory, in the 1 gig (4x video memory of the console) video memory.

Further proof lies in the horrible PS3 as a linux machine performance. Seriously, who would want a linux desktop with 256mb memory? Why not just try to run linux on the DS and really hurt yourself... oh wait... someone is doing just that.

But can't clever programming offset this? No, not really. That same clever programming after all also works on PC's so they get the same benefit and STILL have tons more memory. While you can make a lot of fun games that use little memory, a lot of games just don't fit. You can't have a large open persistent world where you can zoom around and have non-streaming optimized content (Think GTA where you have lots of car models but only a couple loaded at the same time) in 512mb.

And no, it ain't just shooters. Think the Sims 3. All that user created content, were is it going to fit? A decent installation with a owner who wants her sims to be JUST right already can bring a PC to its knees with its memory demands. On the console forget it! The HD would catch on fire.

The simple fact is that once all the tricks on the PS2 were learned, it was still a horribly obsolete machine compared to an average PC. Only people that don't game think different. Why do think we still got PC only games? MMO development is PC only (the recent FFXIV is such a failure that it can't be counted)?

Somehow I think the guys at Crytek know better then some console fanboy.

Re:Can you say MEMORY

[tehcyder]

Seriously, who would want a linux desktop with 256mb memory?

Someone with a 256mb machine they couldn't economically upgrade but would rather use than just junk?

I recently got a very cheap old laptop with 256mb memory, it came with (and adequately ran) Windows XP, but I'd rather have Linux, so Xubuntu was a godsend. You don't need 4gb RAM and a 512mb graphics card just to get a desktop...

Re:Seriously?

[Issarlk]

Ahh, discs... the thing that makes it so slooooooooooooow to load the next level. Awesome experience for sure.

Re:Simple solution

[CronoCloud]

Some PS2 and PS3 games do! Not as many as I'd like though. @#$@#$# Orange Box.

Why there is no PC-based console?

[master_p]

It's strange, isn't it? there is no PC-based console. A machine like that could be easily upgraded by replacing the graphics card, processor, CPU and motherboard, etc. The only thing required is a dumbed-down version of Windows or a special version of Linux.

The console could be sold with 3 configurations: one extra cheap with a low-level graphics card for playing older/smaller games, a middle range card for playing most games and a super-high-powered card for playing games based on the Crytek engine. The consoles would be easily upgradable by just opening them and replacing the video card.

Re:Why there is no PC-based console?

[del_diablo]

The upgrade cycle would make the console useless.
Add on the power difference would ruin the entire idea.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Samfer]

Amen to that! PC Gaming 4 life!!!! :D

Average

[tepples]

the average mobile phone is more powerful than some of our consoles.

Sure, some smartphones have more CPU, GPU, and RAM than a Wii console, but what definition of average are you thinking of? There are still a lot of "feature phones" out there, used by people who don't want to blow $70 per month for 24 months on a voice and data plan.

Re:Average

[thegarbz]

You're splitting hairs and missing the point. The point is we have houses full of HDTVs. The point is that the same game (Guitar Hero series) is much nicer to play on the more heavily powered Xbox360 than the Wii based purely on the fact that the graphics are smoother and easier to look at on the Xbox360 which can't be done on the Wii due to cheap hardware.

I get that the Wii is cheap, but at the same time I can't help but feel that the majority of the people here who complain that they bought the Wii and then haven't used it do so for to a part that reason.

Shared screen invites spontaneity

[tepples]

No, each player buy one copy

Which means two to four copies end up purchased in one household, one for each player living there. How well would the home version of Street Fighter II have sold if it required two Super NES consoles, two TVs, and two copies of the game?

and then takes their PC round mates house.

Good luck convincing someone else living in the same household who wants to use the PC for Facebook to agree to this. And good luck driving back home to go get your PC when you're already at a mate's house for some other reason and you feel like playing a video game. Shared screen invites spontaneity.

The multiscreen playing thing on consoles, but it is a bit of joke since you can always glance across at your fellow players screen and cheat.

I'll grant that split-screen doesn't make sense for some genres, such as 3D shooters that aren't cooperative. But the genres for which it does make perfect sense, such as fighting games, are precisely the genres underrepresented on PCs.

PC will always be ahead.

[DarthVain]

Just the nature of the beast.

Consoles lately in the last couple of years have gotten innovative with controllers however.

I think it is somewhat interesting that while they are behind in graphic power due to cost and how they are released, the real difference is how they use the changing online world.

One might argue that the BIGGEST innovation in gaming in the last 5-10 years has been the development of MMO's (Primarily Everquest and then World of Warcraft) . Consoles have yet to crack that nut. Sony tried with Final Fantasy without much success so far as I know. They sort of tried again with their 256 player shooter (which I think is a very cool idea), but again didn't get great reviews. Xbox has moved to a subscription and market place model for their online experience, and Sony will likely follow. Anyway they still have yet to even touch the market years and years later, which I find telling.

Could you imagine if any of the consoles released World of Warcraft? I mean that would be a pretty huge deal. However I can't see that happening. The most likely culprit being the fact that its a fight for control between Blizzard and the console makers, and the simple fact that Blizzard doesn't need them.

Re:Captain Obvious

[bigrockpeltr]

yup both of those games are extremely fun. i especially like red steel 2. the only thing is that i wished it had a two player duel mode which would have made it epic.

a need for the disclosure of digital distribution?

[tehcyder]

Are they seriously saying that developers don't know how many games they sold on a particular platform?

Re:Captain Obvious

[tehcyder]

I was in japan a couple months ago, played a fucking awesome wii fps. Instead of the standard wii mote, there was gun with scope (and a pistol), trigger, and buttons on the side. It had a pretty decent weight to it, which helped (didn't feel like a toy). It also had a fairly substantial kickback/recoil -- didn't hurt your shoulder, but you had to re-aim afterwards, just like real-life. I've played arcade games with gun peripherals, but this seemed a lot more realistic and more fun. Probably helped that I was drunk and a cute girl was giving me a blowjob at the time (^_^)

This is absolutely the most convincing post I have ever read on slashdot.

boo hoo, I can't sell my GPU benchmark on consoles

[Ant P.]

Corporate Wanker.

Want to see what puts PC gaming a generation ahead? Go play Minecraft. That won't be done on this generation of consoles. This week's Generic War Battle Blood Crisis Shoot Face Duty Tournament 58 game is nothing special.

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[Mike Mentalist]

its consoles. they are too locked in, and their companies do not put out new generations often. that is why the console market is dragging ALL gaming behind. developers are having to accommodate consoles that are a few years behind in technology.

not to mention the horrible, flat-out fascist attitude of the console producers towards any kind of free development, improvement, or modding on their devices.

really, it would be better if they are totally dropped.

Better for who? There is a reason why consoles are so much more popular for gaming than PCs - ease of use.

Re:Captain Obvious

[tehcyder]

It's the controls.

I've tried playing a FPS (Far Cry something) on my kids Wii and it's painful, you feel like you've got Parkinson's disease with everything all jittery and random.

Re:Captain Obvious

[tehcyder]

But your PC can also be used for other things than gaming/being a media centre. For example, it is much easier surfing the web or creating a word processing document when you have a mouse and keyboard (just thinking of standard computer tasks).

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[unity100]

better for all of us. what you are playing in consoles, have come to this point with the development of gaming tech, which was spearheaded always by pc. now, consoles are keeping it back. because console companies are increasingly lax in putting out new consoles.

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[Mike Mentalist]

better for all of us. what you are playing in consoles, have come to this point with the development of gaming tech, which was spearheaded always by pc. now, consoles are keeping it back. because console companies are increasingly lax in putting out new consoles.

All of who? If consoles disappeared tomorrow it doesn't mean that all those former console gamers will buy a gaming PC. There is nothing lax about not putting a new console out, it's just the market forces at work.

Not only resolution but also physical size

[tepples]

Consoles have larger monitors than PCs. [...] it's hard to crowd four people holding gamepads around a 17" monitor.

Hmm, it's hard to find anyone using a monitor with a worse resolution than their living room TV.

I can imagine a 1440x900 PC monitor and a 1080p TV. But at least as important as resolution is the physical size of the display. Some genres are designed for two to four people looking at one monitor rather than two to four separate monitors.

Shared screen doesn't always mean split

[tepples]

How many console games are designed for this? 4? [...] Keep your split screen multiplayer.

Shared screen doesn't always mean split screen. For example, Bomberman and Smash TV show all players on one screen, and so does every fighting game since Street Fighter 1, let alone II, including all Super Smash Bros. games. Tetris splits the screen, but it doesn't bother players because the playfield was vertical on a horizontal monitor anyway.

And not to mention the type I could care less about.

Other people do care about these genres.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Skuto]

CoD or 007 work fine. More evidence that bad games are the Wii's worst liability.

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[unity100]

they dont need to. the pressure can make the console operators give more freedoms to their users with their hardware and software.

hell, even the pioneering 'home computers' of mid 80s have expansion cartridges and whatnot. you could attach mem to amigas. some of them could even have coprocessors attached.

with the current state of chip industry, it doesnt take any effort to make consoles upgradeable at least in a few respects, like cpu power, or, gpu power, or mem, and allow users more freedom.

and that would make additional revenue for console operators too. instead of hauling out entire platforms in every 3-4 years, they can speedily sell more cpus, gpus, mem units to the owners, both making more profits and also making them happy. also cutting design costs.

Re:Difference in multiplayer paradigm

[petermgreen]

True to an extent though i've noticed that a LOT less games are offering single console multiplayer this generation now that consoles have online support.

Re:Captain Obvious

[del_diablo]

Sorry to say so, but some research would indicate that its your own problem that you can't hold a remote steady towards a set point.
All the shooters i played trough was awesome, and the controls was generally really good for the aiming part. The only bad thing is when they overdid the motion controls, and used them for things they never should have been used for.
The few times I have seen somebody struggeling, I usually waited around until I myself got the chance, and in all cases it was the users who had overdone shaky hands.

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[Mike Mentalist]

they dont need to. the pressure can make the console operators give more freedoms to their users with their hardware and software.

hell, even the pioneering 'home computers' of mid 80s have expansion cartridges and whatnot. you could attach mem to amigas. some of them could even have coprocessors attached.

with the current state of chip industry, it doesnt take any effort to make consoles upgradeable at least in a few respects, like cpu power, or, gpu power, or mem, and allow users more freedom.

and that would make additional revenue for console operators too. instead of hauling out entire platforms in every 3-4 years, they can speedily sell more cpus, gpus, mem units to the owners, both making more profits and also making them happy. also cutting design costs.

You don't really seem to understand the point of game consoles.

Re:Its not multiple platforms thats hampering gami

[eharvill]

with the current state of chip industry, it doesnt take any effort to make consoles upgradeable at least in a few respects, like cpu power, or, gpu power, or mem, and allow users more freedom. and that would make additional revenue for console operators too. instead of hauling out entire platforms in every 3-4 years, they can speedily sell more cpus, gpus, mem units to the owners, both making more profits and also making them happy. also cutting design costs.

And doing that makes them essentially the same as PCs and all the issues of designing a game around systems with different specs.

Its all a racket

[NuKe_MoNgOoSe]

Console or PC they are not in the business anymore of entertaining, they find a marketable concept and run with it. Atleast with consoles I know that any content coming out for it will be completely compatible with it. With PC you always have to have a open door to you wallet to purchase new RAM, new processors, new mobos' to keep up with the straining demands of higher end PC games. This may appeal to some of course but for me? I enjoy the pick-up-and-play one button into the action fix that i get from consoles. Like most things however it has become less and less about making a quality, immersive, detailed game and more about the bottom line and it doesnt matter in that case if your pro PC, pro console or both.

consoles are about control

[Dan667]

you cannot innovate or move at a rapid pace when you want to control everything to try and milk every cent you can out of a console. PC Gaming has and always be a strong platform no matter how companies try to continue to game the sales stats to make it look like consoles are selling well. PC Games are selling great and always will.

Re:Captain Obvious

[Gizzmonic]

And before somebody comes in with random examples of mature Wii games: I know they exist. But they aren't the norm, and you have to wade through the family stuff and the junk in order to find them.

Well, you see, there's this thing called the internet now, and you can use it to find any type of games you like. Might I suggest a Google search for 'Mature Wii titles' or is that too much effort for you?

Or are you still 'wading' through the aisle at your local Blockbuster like it's 1995?

Re:Captain Obvious

[Gizzmonic]

Why can't, say, Dell or Gateway make a PC in a home-theater-PC case for 599 US dollars and call it the new fourth console?

Have you heard of this new thing called "Microsoft Xbox"? That's what you're looking for.

The reason that no one is duplicating Microsoft's efforts:

1)Microsoft is losing billions on their own console. Most of the few remaining PC manufacturers are deep in the red, and they don't have billions to burn.

2)They don't want to piss off Microsoft.

3)Developers are already doing the "Games for Windows" thing with the 360 controller, why would they want to increase costs by retrofitting their system to yet another control scheme?

Re:Captain Obvious

[tepples]

Have you heard of this new thing called "Microsoft Xbox"?

Yes. I've also heard of things that Microsoft officially won't let XNA game developers do, such as 1. porting a game from a non-.NET platform, 2. including text in the language of a fictional culture that the player character encounters, or 3. (until recently) letting the program synthesize sound effects in real time.

They don't want to piss off Microsoft.

How would selling a gaming PC running a Microsoft operating system piss off Microsoft? It's another Windows license.

Developers are already doing the "Games for Windows" thing with the 360 controller, why would they want to increase costs by retrofitting their system to yet another control scheme?

The set-top gaming PC I was thinking about would be designed for "Games for Windows" games and other PC games.