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Putting Up With Consolitis
An anonymous reader tips an article about 'consolitis,' the term given to game design decisions made for the console that spill over and negatively impact the PC versions of video games.
"Perhaps the most obvious indicator of consolitis, a poor control scheme can single-handedly ruin the PC version of a game and should become apparent after a short time spent playing. Generally this has to do with auto-aim in a shooter or not being able to navigate menus with the mouse. Also, not enough hotkeys in an RPG — that one’s really annoying. ... Possibly the most disastrous outcome of an industry-wide shift to console-oriented development is that technological innovation will be greatly slowed. Though a $500+ video card is considered top of the line, a $250 one will now play pretty much any game at the highest settings with no problem. (Maybe that’s what everyone wanted?) Pretty soon, however, graphics chip makers won’t be able to sustain their rate of growth because the software is so far behind, which will be bad for gamers on consoles as well as PC."
Here I thought this was going to be about Nintendo Thumb.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Who cares?
If anything games are becoming more like computer games overall. Traditional console RPGs look more like MMOs now, games require patching and even have DRM...a few quirks introduced by lazy companies that do lazy ports don't make "consolitis".
Seems more like major revisions will come in line with consoles, this doesn't necessarily mean the pace of innovation will slow, just the releases will be further apart.
Certainly a first-world problem. Boo hoo.
The CB App. What's your 20?
was in the author's mind when he wrote this? It let down so much compared to all of the other COD's.
I really feel where the author is coming from because of all the games you hear that "are awesome" on the consoles. You try them on the PC and they are just horrible. Jittery lag, poor graphics, horrendous controls, and the list goes on and on.
First the article about bloatware, then this?
The reason the world isn't moving in the direction you want is that there aren't enough of you spending money on things you like. That's not an indication of the world moving in some wrong direction.
Well, the shit flows both ways. 1 generation ago (PS2) there was no console game patching - so developers had to finish making the game before shipping it. Now the console gamers have to put up with fallout 3 and New Vegas - "here's the beta, we maybe fix it later" shit.
Video cards push pixels and the number of pixels has stalled in the last couple of years. 1920x1080 is the norm, and there appears to be no push to go higher. I read a great rant last year that effective summed it up. You can't blame console games for the fact that PC gamers have screens with the same resolution as their TVs. Blame either the manufacturers for failing to increase pixel density or consumers for failing to demand it. You've got to go to a 30" monitor to get a higher resolution, and the price of those beasts scares most people away. Why pay $800+ for a 30" when a pair of 24" 1080p monitors costs half that?
----------
Still waiting for my in-retina display.
So you're complaining because you can spend a relatively modest sum to play any game that you want without having to worry about a $500-1000 upgrade every year or two? Get the fuck out! This is unequivocally a Good Thing(tm).
The summary should have read "FiringSquad ad revenue is on the decline, here's an article about nothing, for you to linkspam".
Yeah, console games usually make for shitty PC ports, which is freakin' pathetic since the console title had to be developed on a PC in the first place, and today's middleware makes the distinctions largely irrelevant. This is not news. The same was true back in the 80's (minus the middleware).
My biggest peeve ? Not the shitty controls. Not the slightly degraded textures. Not the total lack of post-release fixes. No, my biggest peeve is when a stupid console port restricts your choice of display resolution. It is trivial to pull a list of API-sourced geometries and run with it, rather than hardcode for 720p and 1080p... or worse yet: 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768. Yeah ok, I was running 1024x768 fifteen years ago, it's kinda tired.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I LOVE Consolitis! it's holding up directx massively. The longer they take the faster Linux catches up. We already have almost full Directx 9 support in wine and directx 10/11 support is already being implemented. You can currently play pretty much any windows game except .net 3.5/games for windows live titles. Consolitis sucks for PC games in general, but for Linux/Mac gamers it's done more than any OpenGL development in the last 10 years for compatibility.
The one thing worse than consolitis is inline advertisements injected into the text of an article as fake links. D:
But going back to the subject at hand the most glaring recent example of consolitis in a game has to be The Force Unleashed. That game had horrible mouse control which made one boss fight basically impossible. With a gamepad you had to hold just both sticks down, but with the mouse you had to constantly move the mouse downwards for 30 seconds at a time. Arggg.
"Though a $500+ video card is considered top of the line, a $250 one will now play pretty much any game at the highest settings with no problem. (Maybe that’s what everyone wanted?) Pretty soon, however, graphics chip makers won’t be able to sustain their rate of growth because the software is so far behind, which will be bad for gamers on consoles as well as PC."
Making content that looks good at 1080P (or 1920x1200 for some PC monitors) is hard. Some amazingly specialized people spend a lot of time working on it; the more powerful the graphics processor, the more that is possible, but the more art assets have to be created (along with all the associated maps to take advantage of lighting, special effects, shader effects...) and the more programming time has to me spent. Much like the number of pixels increases far faster than the perimeter of the screen, or the volume of a sphere increases faster than its surface area... the work to support ever-increasing graphics power grows faster than the visual difference in the image.
It's not sustainable, but those advancing graphics processors are a big part of why game developers are moving to consoles: a shinier graphics engine costs more money to develop, which increases the minimum returns for a project to be successful. Anyone who looks at the business side can see that the market of people who have $500 graphics cards is much tinier than the market of people who have an Xbox360 or Playstation3. If you're going to spend that much money on the shiny, of course you're going to shoot for a bigger return too!
When it takes a big team to develop something... well, that's generally not where the innovation is going to happen.
--Matthew
I really, really miss Loki.
I still want to kick someone at Epic in the nutts for not following through with the promised Linux port of UT3. (My copy is still sitting there waiting to be played for the first time)
If you use SDL and Open GL you can make it work on everything easier! /rant complete, my version of PC gaming covered, go back to bitching about consoles and Windows Microsoft weenie.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Monitors are cheap, so an 3 monitor Eyefinity-setup on Windows 7 is used by many, and held as the next upgrade by more gamers. For that setup to be of any use, you got to have 3 monitors (doh!) and a good gfx-card. Some people are prevented from doing that upgrade because they have power-supply, CPU or OS that does not allow this setup.
"Inflammation of the Console"?
C'mon now, you can butcher the language in more creative ways than that.
Pretty soon, however, graphics chip makers won’t be able to sustain their rate of growth because the software is so far behind
Well, that seems good to me. One of the deterrents of PC gaming is the everchanging hardware specs. If consoles have proved already that we can live with the hardware power from 6 years ago and still make games that look quite impressive (at least, sufficiently good), perhaps it's time that computer videocards slow down and allow the population to catch up. It sucks buying a $250 video card just to have to replace it in 2 years, whereas this-generation-consoles have lasted 6 years. The solution is, of course, to buy a $500 videocard, which will be good for a few years, but with that money you can get a console with controllers and one or two bundled games, so why bother? Not to mention buying a decent mouse, keyboard, screen and speakers.
Perhaps we should even learn from the wii and the indie games, which can run on computers 7 years old! Why must we have a new hyper-mega-powerful new $600 video card every year?
Sure, one could argue that video-game developers could actually take advantage of the new hardware (DX 11, anyone?) and have amazingly-looking games, but why bother? Do we really want more realism, graphics-wise, than the MOH and COD franchises currently offer? I think that the success of those franchises, specially the last three CODs, speak for itself. We don't need a new over-hyped video card every six months; we don't need a thousand different model-names that no one understands; we don't need cutting-edge technology to make games. And certainly, we don't need to have such a hostile environment like what PC gaming is, which just turns away most would-be gamers.
That is, truly, what the consoles do right. You don't have to know anything about computers or videogames to pick up one and within minutes start playing your new videogame. You need not install, tweak or configure in any way your games or consoles. You need not update to the latest card drivers. You need not replace any part of your console (except the ones that stop working) every two years; you don't need to worry about system specs, and figuring out if your GT 250 is better or worse than a GT 260 or a HD 5730. Finally, while I'm on it, you need not worry about fucking DRM in your console games, although that's another story (and perhaps the trade is fair, for PC gamers need not fear that their PC manufacturer suddenly bricks their computer... unless sony is involved).
Besides, everyone keeps complaining how games nowadays focus on looking stunning and having great sound effects and, basically, taking too much effort into the media part of the game, while slacking off in other areas, like immersiveness, story, character development and all that. Now they're saying "we should have better graphics now!". I call bullshit.
Rip off of the more generally known term of 'consolization'. Just someone trying to coin a term that a lot of people are already aware of. It's good it's actually getting a article now though. :o
I pretty much just chucked force unleashed because I always play games with the numeric keypad, and the game kept telling me to press the wrong keys. Is it so hard to check what key is mapped to do something? And what's up with having to exit the game and configure it from the pre-launch menu just to change the key config? I think overlord 2 was the last one I saw guilty of this.
I remember playing halo on the PC. I searched every setting I could possibly locate and yet could not figure out how to dissable the bloody auto-aim. Sure on a console it's useful (aiming with a joystick is a joke!), but it seriously destroys the entire game on the PC.
I'm running down a hallway and see an enemy (who hasn't spotted me yet) about 2/3 hidden by a wall, so I aim at his arm at fire a precision weapon (not the needler or anything) and guess what? The game goes "Oh, you are shooting at enemy FOO, let me just 'fix' your aim a little and make the bullet hit him in the chest". Now this MAY have helped had his chest not been BEHIND THE BLOODY WALL! Instead I am forced to flank around him until the CENTER of his body is visible and THEN shoot.
Played through it once and went "screw this". Haven't touch any halo games ever since. The REALLY sad part is that halo was originally going to be a PC game before Microsoft (ironically a PC Operating System developer) decided to make it "console playable".
It's just what we wanted. Yes, we, that almost certainly includes you. Remember those times when we were playing our precious games, misunderstood by surroundings? When we wished they would try, and understand?
... and BTW how virtually every "PC magazine" from a decade ago was marveled for some reason about "PC console" (while openly shunting "old school" ones) looks even funnier now)
Guess what - it happened! Be happy. Games are now made for general consumption (which impacts also traditional console games / many characteristic genres almost disappeared, possibilities of controllers are also underutilized, presentation is not what it used to be, even UIs often forget that scrollable nested menus is what works in this world. What the author whines about are hybrids - probably helped by Xbox, how it brought very universal SDK
General population also doesn't like constant upgrade cycles BTW. But...no technical innovation? How hard was it to, say, miss the recent ruckus about Kinect?
And overall, I really don't know what the problem is. Sure, a lot of games "sux"...but even when limiting myself to games of the past, I'm pretty sure I would have good things to play for the rest of my life.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Reducing the amount of money I have to spend on video cards is not a bad thing. Control and gameplay problems are. Dead Space on PC was totally unplayable because the mouse input was converted to an analog stick-style velocity input, capping its max speed and forcing me to flail wildly at my desk just to turn around. Mass Effect doesn't let me hit escape to back out of menus. Aliens Vs. Predator was about as interactive as Doom -- point at the glowing quest object and hold down the use key; repeat fifty times. With all this advanced technology, why does it feel like time is going backwards? None of the big-name console shooters can hold a candle to 2004's Half-Life 2 in any area except graphics, and even then the poor art direction cripples them (brown, gray, brown gray, dull green...). And let's not forget the big contribution of this console generation, DLC -- the sort of add-ons we used to get for free now have a price tag attached. The PC versions don't charge yet, but you know it's coming.
Don't get me wrong, I love consoles. I've played consoles games in every generation since the NES. I just don't see a lot of positive influence on PC gaming these days aside from standardized graphics requirements. The keyboard and mouse are just better for some kinds of games, and it saddens me to see those games dumbed down so they can fit in hardware that was never designed to accomodate them.
On the other hand, it could be worse -- the next big influence is probably going to be touchscreen phone games, and we all know how great touchscreens are for gaming, right?
Visit the
What amazes me is that I sometimes get the impression that consoles are somehow the preferred platform for gaming. I mean, the rate at which new consoles get brought to market is so slow, and the rate at which the PC world moves is so fast, that before you know it, Linux is a better gaming platform than the consoles, and mobile phones have better hardware. I understand the benefits of developing for a stable and homogeneous platform, but PCs are going to be running circles around consoles pretty soon.
As far as a stable platform goes - modern PCs can still run software written for the PCs of the 1980s, X is from 1984, and OpenGL from 1992. The BSD and win32 APIs have been available on PCs since 1993 or thereabouts, and DirectX since 1995. Take your pick; all of those predate the current generation of consoles.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It's not big deal, really... I had my consils removed from me when I was a kid and I turned out (mostly) fine. Now I game on PCs and I'm better for it.
CoD: Modern Warfare 2 is a pretty good example of consolitis, though certainly not as bad as Black Ops.
When MWF2 came out there were a lot of complaints from PC gamers about the lack of a console, the lack of dedicated server support, inability to change field of view from default, etc.
As a PC Call of Duty fan, imagine my surprise and joy when I stumbled upon AlterIW, a community hacking project that fixes all that. To add insult to injury, the hack is designed to slipsteam into a SKiDROW torrent of the game.
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion suffers from "consolitis" in that the controls just arent right for a PC. For example why cant I click on a chest and have it open automatically to allow me to pick stuff up without needing to press a button to open it?
On a console having a separate "open chest" button made sense but not on PC with a mouse.
One of the worst thing about the shitty console ports is that you can't easily map game controls to the controller of choice.
For example, Heroes over europe released without Joystick support, WTF a game based on air combat and no joystick.... Just cause 2 suffers from the same problems. I have a logitech game pad (yea I know it is a little old) and none of the recent console ports will easily allow me to map to it... If I want to be able to use my vast collection of non console based game controllers, I am restricted to titles that predate the 3rd gen consoles...
Almost enough to make me give up gaming altogether if it wasn't for MW2
10 years ago, a good chunk of gaming was done on PCs because consoles were crap - standard def, too-small TVs, and the like, so people bought nice high-end PCs and invested in them. Dropping $2000+ on a PC wasn't unheard of nor unusual.
These days, spending more than $500 on a PC is very unusual - only Apple and PC gamers do that stuff, and really, it's no surprise why. And that $500 gets you a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and other accessories.
Who's the #1 graphics chip maker in the world? It's not nVidia or AMD, it's Intel. (Sure, nVidia and AMD have the discrete graphics market, but that's a really tiny chunk of the whole PC market). When PC prices plummeted below $1000 and then below $500 (and laptops became "netbooks" below $500) manufacturers know that the average PC buyer cares about Gigs (hard drive space), Gigs (RAM) and Gigs (CPU GHz). Nowhere do they really care about graphics - after all, Windows does just fine on Intel graphics, and that's all the user sees.
The higher end PCs with discrete graphics sell far less, even one with a low-end graphics may be considered a gaming PC (and little Jonny's mom and pop aren't buy a PC for games, oh no, they want so Jonny can work).
PC gaming is huge - after all, FarmVille and the like don't require super high end ultimate graphics chips and many popular indie tities have lightweight requirements that even the cheapest of netbooks can play them.
The problem is, as we all know, Intel graphics are crap (though they're supposed to get better now with nVidia), and can barely do 1080p video decoding and high-def gaming.
So people buy a console as well - and with HDTV, they get high-def and on the big ol' 52" HDTV versus their 17"/20" PC monitor (or whatever is free these days). They could buy it on a PC as well (it's easy enough to do), but that requires spending money buying more PC - they could build/configure a great PC for $600, but that's over the "cap" of PC prices of $500. (Everyone gasps at the price of a $1000 MacBook Air, comparing it to a $300 netbook (despite better graphics (Intel vs nVidia) and CPU (Core2Duo is old, but runs rings around Atom), SSD, RAM, etc.).
Hell, I tried to convince someone to spend $1000 to buy a decent laptop and they balked.
No, it's not consoles limiting graphics of games - it's PCs themselves. The number of people with high end $600+ video cards (or probably any nVidia or AMD graphics cards of the past say 4 years) is very small compared to the total PC market. And we know PC gaming is larger than console gaming, but they're all for games that can play on the #1 video card on the market.
And developers go for the money - there are more console gamers out there than hardcore PC gamers with power graphics cards (and the willingness to upgrade yearly or so) - even though there are more PC gamers in general. Other than that, consoles and PCs are pretty much plug-and-play (and Sony's making the PS3 a PC experience with installers, EULAs, serial keys, online DRM, oh my).
Because consoles are getting all the ports directx is being held up and Linux/Mac are catching up with wine support for directx. Can already run pretty much everything important except .net 3.5 and games for windows Live.
Is still WAY more expensive than a console ... because the entire console is going to cost about that, and you don't need to buy hard drives, cases, motherboards, processors, ram and whatever I'm not thinking of.
You also don't have to worry about drivers on your console, and your not going to run into a hardware compatibility problem unless you use some unbadged knockoff add-on.
And in 6 months, you'll need another $250 video card and probably some ram now that we have 64 bit OSes
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
... welcome our console overlords!
Seriously, though, that's about as biased a post as you can get on this issue: Possibly the most disastrous outcome of an industry-wide shift to graphics-oriented development is that gameplay innovation has been greatly slowed.
*sigh*
Don't generalize, I never wished for such a thing.
I just wanted and want to have fun period, all my friends and I are gamers since the 80s. And most of us find the current game generation to be horrid outside of indie gaming or rare gems.
I am still on a 3 year old mid range PC graphics card which I back then got for 150$ it still runs pretty much every new game which comes out on the PC ad mid til high end settings.
The reason, the stallment of the update cycle caused by the last console generation.
The funny thing is, if you want cheap gaming it is currently the PC, the games are cheaper and usually hit the bargain bin earlier, and given that the consoles lack severely on the hardware side and PC only development has come to a standstill or went mostly independend you dont even have to upgrade your graphics card. And with the next console generation it probably again will be just a shift to the next mid range graphics card version 1-2 years into the consoles lifespan and you are set for another 7-8 years, depending on the lifespan of the consoles.
Does it hurt the PC Graphics card makers, sure, does it hurt the console gamers which will not be able to get such huge shift in graphics from each generation anymore, sure. What can we do about it nothing I guess, people flocked to the consoles and thats now what they get.
PC graphics card makers are aware of that paradigm shift and move slowly into other directions. NVidia currently moves into the Supercomputer market because their cards are more like modern Vector machines than anything else and also into the handheld market with their Tegra Line. The PC market is seen by them as something probably better left to Intel in the long term no growth there anymore and no big sales numbers for dedicated graphics solutions there anymore.
ATI does what AMD always did they try to stick with the PC market but they are also integrating their graphics cores.
I have the opposite problem: I have a HTPC at home in which I would like to play some games using my gamepad and maybe control some things with my remote, but I can't.
Most games require mouse and/or keyboard to navigate through a menu when this could be perfectly done with a gamepad.
And I'm not talking only about commercial games, but also free ones like Tux Racer (or whatever the new name is), bzflag, etc.
The only thing that works well with a gamepad are console emulators like zsnes, gngeo and mame, but even these lack lirc or
dbus support, so to integrate them with my HTPC I had to create workarounds.
If only these emulators supported dbus, I could send commands from irexec and I could use my remote to pause the game, save screenshots, quit, etc.
On another note, I have seen some arcade machines with integrated webcams that take a picture of the user to set their avatar. That would be nice for computer games as well.
Well, generalization (etc.) is the force pushing the market in one direction or the other... and I remember quite a lot of young gamers being fed up with how many people "don't get it"
... and suddenly the latter won't look so bad in comparison)
(BTW, return sometimes to those games from the 80s - and not only to those you remember fondly, but to similarly broad selection which you denounce in current ones
One that hath name thou can not otter
No, wait. Don't bother. It is bad. Very VERY bad. So amazingly bad you actually got to watch to admire the sheer horror of the train wreck.
Now some FF fan will come by and defend it because it is different. So is having 11 fingers, you are still a freak. Different isn't always better, sometimes we do things a certain way because they work.
A simple example is chat channels. Most MMO's do them IRC style. It works, has worked for decades and we all know it. Not FF14, it uses a system they named linkshells which basically means you can't talk to anyone until you talked to them... the manual doesn't explain any of this because that would be "hand holding" accoridng to FF fans. Some websites try to explain it but seen that fan web sites are made by fans they don't explain it very well.
The entire control system is clearly designed around the limitations of the controller. But to sit you have to type /sit and to stand you can then click on an icon which opens the menu were the stand option is or type that command as well. No simple press forward key to stand-up.
Sitting has been done in a LOT of MMO's and they ALL implement "walk to standup" it is natural. So FF doesn't do it.
Being a firm PC gamer and therefor a western game maker I have only played a few console games and have come to believe that Japanese game producers can't produce a good UI if their life depended on it. See the countless DS games were the music can't be turned off.
But hey, PC makers hopefully will wake up and realize that there is no more money to be made in making the desktop faster. What am I going to use a 6 core for anyway? How many photoshop users are there? Really dual core is fast enough for all my office needs and I don't really ever run out of 4gig memory on a desktop either.
But PC games sell the top end hardware. Do you think a person buys the Black Editions of a CPU for Office? Hell no. That is gamer territory. So better make sure there are games out there that need it.
But hey, luckily there is the MMO industry which is happy to soak up every CPU cycle for a game totally designed for a Console yet uses more memory for the installer then any console has...
It is an amazing market. Everyone knows consoles are the next market for MMO's yet nobody can actually manage it, not even a console company.
Do console companies forbid their developers from looking up the console specs? No keyboard for chat, no memory to load an open world with RANDOM elements (for the console owners, GTA deals with an open world by LIMITING the random content namely the cars you encounter. A MMO can't do this, it can't limit what outfit the next person you encounter is going to wear. If there are 100 people in your vision all with different outfits, they all got to be loaded and that takes memory which consoles do not have)
Come on Intel, AMD, NVidia, realize that Windows gaming IS the place that sells your hardware. FUND proper games or become REALLY good at selling cut-rate budget CPU's anyone can make at a huge profit margin.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... that is under served. The game company who can serve the under served with the right game that doesn't dumb down it's game will hit it big.
The real issue is that game developers are losing touch with gamers by trying to copy WoW and are caught up in multiplayer hysteria, when EA says it is the "end for the single player game" I laugh. These jokers are just creating markets for other more ambitious and far seeing people to move into.
Basically your entire rant is this: The fast majority of cars are boring grey boxes on wheels used for getting from A-B so there is no market for special after-market kit...
Oh wait.
Or: The fast majority of people just want their cheap food in a restaurant to come with a toy, so there is no market for fine restaurants that do not ask you to supersize your order.
Oh wait.
Basically, just because a segment of a market is not the entire market doesn't mean that you can increase your earning by going for the whole market. A three star restaurant will NOT do better if it goes for fast food instead.
PC owners are NOT just PC gamers with a cheap computer, they are people that don't want to play PC games which is why they got a cheap PC instead of a decent one. By trying to aim my product at the cheap end of the market that ain't intrested I only risk loosing the real market segment that wants my games.
It is not like there isn't a bottom PC gaming industry, they produce the simple title that mothers buy for their kids at the super market for a tenner and that are universally craptastic.
And their revenue shows it, bottom feeders producing shovel ware surviving on the thinnest of margins. It is a living but is that the way forward?
As for their being more console owners then PC users with a decent graphics card. Sorry but that just ain't true. What people forget is that a decent graphics card doesn't cost all that much, about a hundred bucks will get you a more then capable card. The top end is for people who want a million frames per second. For those satisfied with a mere 30, lesser cards will do. Or we buy a 300 dollar one and have it last for a while.
The proof? Machines that can run a The Sims 3 with full set of user made add-ons are apparently plentifull considering the sale figures for The Sims 3 addons but they require a far more powerfull machine then many hard core titles (really, try it).
The 600 dollar card is for the ultimate fans, but far less will still give you a card barely pushed by todays games and it is only so long before people will stop buying them if games do not continue to advance. And advancing your game is about more then just pushing the latest game. Game engines are SOLD and cutting edge tech on the PC makes it way to the consoles sooner or later. If you don't push the PC engine now, will you be ready for the next generation of Consoles?
Also don't forget that many a console is gathering dust. There are many Wii's but the software sale figures show a distinct gap. What is your market? A crowd that doesn't actually like to play games or the game lovers that want your game and every bit of DLC you can produce? Size of market is a very poor metric for determining earning potential.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
He mentions this under "Missing Features" but I find the most annoying thing to come from ports of console titles to PC is the inability to save more often than a console user. I don't want "checkpoints", I want to be able to pause, save, quit whenever I like. Or to quicksave after a long drawn out exposition-in-cutscene by an antagonist, prior to another Final Battle. Most of all, I don't want to have to juggle "save slots", because the original console it was aimed at has limited storage. I have terabytes on hand so please just let me quicksave every 2 seconds if that's what I want.
There are some games that do the "checkpoint thing" well, in that it doesn't get in the way too much and rarely make you re-trace your steps too far but it is still annoying.
And what are you posting this from? A PC?
So you already had all those extra bits eh?
And a 250 dollar card will last you two years or more.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Dunno, it seems to me like when greed is good explanation, that's probably at least a good chunk of the real explanation.
Displays had been sold for an awfully long time by diagonal size, to the point where some people think that a 21" is a 21". In reality at the same diagonal, the closer to square it is, the bigger the surface, and the more wide format it is, the lesser the surface. It's only basic geometry.
For CRTs it didn't make much difference for the total cost, but for flat screen panels it does. Also because less surface means less pixels at the same pixel size, thus less transistors and incidentally less chance for bad pixels too.
So the biggest push for 16/10 displays was from manufacturers who figured they could sell more displays for the same materials, rather than for any real market demand. The market was basically mostly just dumb enough to think they're still getting a 21" so it's not like it's smaller or anything; and hey, it's a little cheaper too.
Now 16/9 happens for largely the same reason.
Mark my words, in a few years you'll see something like 256/81 screens.
If displays had been historically sold by megapixels like the cameras, we'd probably have square ones instead. But the measurement was made for CRTs which don't even really have a native resolution and are more limited by bandwidth instead. So inches was the simplest way to tell Joe Average what he's getting.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
that it's given to you as a gift? And you think you come off looking cool in announcing to the world that you get to fuck once a year? Good job, mate.
First thing you learn when selling is people buy FEATURES. Flash a shiny object and hear "ooohhh...me want".
The benefits exist to answer the objection of their more critical nature (or their wife) "do you really *need* it?".
The $500 video card is probably just as good as the $250--maybe even better in some way.
No, you don't need it. You want it. If you want it, then buy the damned thing.
Buy your billet aluminum shifter knob and enjoy it. It's a complete waste of money, but you get to pretend you're a race car driver and it's fun. Isn't that the point?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
OK, I can believe that in some way, PC gaming is affected by "consolitis" - but by the same token, console gaming has been affected by "PCitis". Console gaming is dominated by first-person / over-shoulder shooters nowadays; a leak from the world of PC gaming which (to me) isn't particularly welcome.
FPSs with a PC heritage are probably the reason dual-analogue joypads became the norm; that's a mixed blessing because it improved the arena shooter (compare the analogue Geometry Wars with the 8-directional Robotron), but it resulted in standard console joypads that are far from optimal for traditional console games such as Street Fighter.
I don't agree. In my 30+ years of computer gaming, I have noticed that software never, ever falls behind. What does happen is that it moves in cycles or waves of innovation where some startup comes out with a completely new way of doing things and then all the big players either copy them, or in the case of EA - buy them out. Then we have an incremental increase in the quality of all new games, where all the majors are including "new feature X" in their sequels. This results in a stagnation period, with endless identical games being released, like we are seeing right now.
However take heart. It just means we are that much closer to the next big thing in gaming.
As a side note, graphics card manufacturers need to start seriously addressing the heat issues with their cards. I have 2 Geforce 470's side by side in a SLI set up, and the fans on the cards are noisy as shit under load, while keeping the cards at a "cool" 98 degrees C. Plus I don't appreciate these heavy, double-width cards covering up all my remaining PCI slots leaving no physical room in my case.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Control scheme change is even more apparent in the GTA3 series. GTA3 itself was obviously made for the PC first and then for console; the control scheme is pretty evenly matched whichever platform you choose. But then when you get into VC, everything on the PC side is ok until you hit the first mission for Avery Carrington (flying the toy helicopter) rather early in the game. Missing that right analog stick to control your clockwise/counterclockwise motion makes that mission incredibly difficult to pull off on a PC, and despite many frustrating hours of effort I could not satisfactorily configure a Xbox 360 controller for the PC to replicate the console controls. Lastly, when you get to SA you are practically stopped at the first Cesar mission (where you have to compete in the hydraulic car hop) because the numkeys don't map like the right analog stick does. Similarly, riding a motorcycle in VC or SA loses some finesse because you can't lean forward or back like you can via the left analog stick using just the keyboard. Considering these games span from ~2001 through to ~2004 I'd say it was a rather rapid sea change.
For those of you who have found otherwise, please let me know where you got your controller bindings (preferably for the 360 controller), because my laptop can outperform the heck out of my 360 visually.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
While the intended console port was a limiting factor, I think by far the biggest problem was their being made by Cryptic. In fact by the original guys who couldn't even do the maths to see that a "situational" power could be made to stack with itself twice over at level 22, in COH, or produced balance swings so extreme as to go from City Of Blasters (a devices blaster could floor any enemy's accuracy) to City Of Tankers (tanks became basically invulnerable even to hundreds of enemies at a time.) COH has in the meantime been mostly fixed by Positron (in as much as possible without pulling a Sony-style NGE and ripping out the existing game's core), but Statesman and a good chunk of the gang of innumerates responsible for the COH fuckups went on to make CO.
CO suffered from a lot of problems, from a badly thought out game system, to poor graphics, to just plain old barely enough content to even level you up. Cryptic basically aimed at developing it on a shoestring budget, and it really showed. I don't think it would have been a huge success even with a COH-like mouse and keyboard interface.
STO was largely the same deal. It was a game which took one of the biggest franchises in history and... aimed for a 20,000 player base. No, really, the budget was such that it was to be viable even if it failed badly. And as happens when you aim to suck so badly that only the worst fanboys stick with you, it did.
Again the game had plain old too little content, and worse yet, you could miss out on missions by just not being in the right quadrant when you ask, so you could easily end up seemingly with nothing more to do except grind randomly generated and not very interesting "exploration" missions until the next contact wants to talk to you.
To hammer on the impression of too little content, the game launched with exactly two factions, and one of them (the Klingons) didn't even have any content except doing (the STO equivalent of) battlegrounds all the time.
It also generally had plain old too little of everything, including character slots. (Everything more than 3 had to be bought with real cash.)
It also didn't help that the game was more of a merchandising exercise than aiming to tell its own story. You know, like putting Spock's face on a t-shirt, not because it makes it a better t-shirt, but just because lemmings will pay more for that.
And I'm not against a little merchandising for theme and flavour, but in STO it was badly done. The game insisted on shoving it down my throat all the time that this is where Riker used the Briar Patch like Bre'r Rabbit, this is the gang that Picard met on some date, etc. At some point I was afraid I'd one day go to the toilet and the game would inform me that I'm using the same urinal Riker did in some episode ;)
In simpler terms, they didn't even remember the "show, don't tell" rule. They had to keep telling me how this connects with some episode or another from the series, and it got repetitive fast.
Etc.
Don't get me wrong, I really wanted to like both games, not the least because I'm kinda fed up with medieval fantasy games. Well, "fed up" is probably too strong a term: I have nothing against them per se, but I've already played plenty and some SF for a change is a nice change. But they both aimed very low
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Though a $500+ video card is considered top of the line, a $250 one will now play pretty much any game at the highest settings with no problem. (Maybe that’s what everyone wanted?) Pretty soon, however, graphics chip makers won’t be able to sustain their rate of growth because the software is so far behind, which will be bad for gamers on consoles as well as PC.
Because I'm certain all PC gamers want to return to the days of Crysis when a top of the line computer still wasn't strong enough to run a latest release game with anything more than average graphic settings unless they were willing to drop a few hundreds on a new video card every six months.
Heh, indeed. I grew up with a Sinclair ZX-81 and later ZX Spectrum. So at one point in 2000 or so I get a Spectrum emulator and look for some tape images online. So I see one particular game and go, "cool! I remember playing that one!" So I download it and play for a quarter of an hour and then it hits me, "I also remember I thought it sucks." :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
All my friends and I are gamers since the 80s. And most of us find the current game generation to be horrid outside of indie gaming or rare gems.
Hmm, but an indie nowadays has a similar market to a mainstream game in your heyday. So just enjoy the indie games, and let the mainstream get on with it.
In my opinion. There is no doubt that Bobby Kotick is Evil. Bobby's greed is in part behind the death game creativity. But don't take my word for it. There has been plenty foretold about developing games strictly for the consoles and offering poorly ported PC versions would stifle advancement in graphics, game play and new creative game technology. Not only is this link important to the subject, but the subset of links within this article tell a sad story that in just over a year how bad things have degenerated already.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/activisions-bobby-kotick-brings-cash-but-not-heart.ars
Bobby was quite public in how he planed to bleed every franchise for as much as possible without any investment in advancing new innovative tech. His argument is based around a console lasting years instead of where with the PC technology advanced every year. This way he could kick out games on a revolving door manner where nothing really changes except perhaps the marketing techniques to the unwashed masses. He now controls the switch with how long any game title is to exist. His plan to fill his pockets was based around turning off an old version of a game after 12-18 months to be replaced by the latest version of the EXACT same game to keep the consoler's out there spending money on latest and greatest (anyone for football) release. His dream that 'you rent games, not own them' model, could work and be highly profitable with consoles, but not if PC's are the development platform of choice.
This eliminates the need to advance technology when you develop for the consoles. Only after years when a new console finally hits the market would there be a need to spend money on development of new ideas. Even then, he wanted to control and slow down the release of new consoles to 7-10+ years. This is his version of stabilizing the market to maximize profits. PC's get in the way of that plan. PC's to Bobby are evil because they advance creativity and introduce cost risk into the market place.
Consoles offer the brain-dead public an easy diversion to their daily dreary drone life. They now can pay a price every month to play, so Bobby's pockets are always full. The words 'New and Innovative' really mean ways to generate profit and no longer relate to something new and creative in the gaming world. No longer will the world need to live live in the 'kiotic' universe that has been the old style game industry. A new industry, of stability and profit, has dawned. The consoles lead the way. No longer will game development teams need to create, innovate and take risk in order to survive and profit from their work. Now they too can be faceless, nameless drones in the sweatshop cubicles of large corporations. They to can now go home at night and play the latest greatest console games to escape their dreary lives.
The consoler's thank the gods for Bobby Kiotic for bringing stability to the gaming universe. So what if porting is done so poorly. It's not like it matters with Bobby's vision. Loss of the PC market won't cause the cost of their games to rise. Or will it?
Am I the only one who gets irritated when people tack on -itis to a word to turn it into a malady? The suffix has a specific meaning, which is "inflammation"; hence, tonsilitis is an inflammation of the tonsils, endocarditis is an inflammation of the lining of the heart (endo = inner, card[iac] = heart), etc. So "consolitis" would be an inflammation of the console. Wonderful.
Sorry, I'm not as pathetic as you that I need the acceptance of all those around me to enjoy something. I can enjoy it for its own sake.
So what did we get with CO and STO? A pair of SEVERELY half-ass MMOs that were little more than button-mash-fests.
It just shows that consolitis is not desirable for genres firmly rooted in online play. It is, on the other hand, desirable for some other genres that are best experienced with a large monitor and two to four gamepads connected to a home theater PC through a USB hub.
There is definitely a limitation to hardware development due to the growth of consoles and I have a great fear the same will occur with the growth of cloud computing and devices like the iPad. The fact is that geeks want hardware that most of the world could care less about but have purchased because it was the option and this drove technology forward. Now that specialized devices are coming out for consumers that don't require that forward motion, there will be a fall off in technological progression that is available to individuals at reasonable prices. That said, while consoles have undoubtedly slowed the rate of graphics card advancement, they have introduced far more need to innovate on the software side to attempt to make the best use of the limited hardware available in current game consoles. I think this part is a great thing which results in better looking games without needing hardware improvements. An ideal world would still have both though.
I think i should make a game that takes a very literal interpretation of the keys on a keyboard.
enter: enters something, like a room
esc: escapes said room
print screen: prints the screen, screenshot
pause/sys-req: pauses the game
home: returns you to your home point
end: ends the game
insert: spawns a new monster
delete: kills a monster
slash: attack a monster by slashing it with a sword
backslash: similar to back-stab
-: run quickly (dash)
tab: time travel to 1983 and enjoy a frothy soda in a pink can
shift: moves stuff around randomly
space: interstellar travel to another world
backspace: interstellar travel to the world you were at last
I didn't realize all consoles come with "built-in voice chat". How long have they all been packaged with the required free headsets? What, they don't come with headsets just like pc's don't?
Not only that, but to drive modern games smoothly at 2560x1600 requires a high-end machine and a $400 or more video card.
It's a feature of the game itself. Not the platform it's on.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Most of the games I play STILL only use 1 core. It's soooo nice to see the game flogging along at 12% CPU usage with 8% GPU utilization on my GTS-250.
AFAIK, all Xbox 360 models come with headsets. Assumed the PS3 did too. Not that I would ever buy anything from Sony.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Is that what you meant? I've never heard of consolitis
...I know that it's going to be extremely hard to get a decent sized 4:3 replacement in a few year time. 16:9 for a PC is just a massive waste of screen space for most things because 90% of apps and web pages are designed, if not with 4:3 in mind, then to support 4:3 and so you end up with horizontal letterboxing all the time.
So 4:3 is going to be replaced because 16:9 is becoming the 'standard' and somehow you don't think that these apps and web pages you talk of won't be designed with err... 16:9 in mind because it will be the standard and now all your 4:3 monitors will have to squeeze the windows.
Anyone remember when left 4 dead first came out and the cheeseball lobby system (not necessary for a pc game) to join or start games worked about half the time, or the endless promises for more maps coming soon? Then the additional content just became L4D2 because they know console gamers are accustomed to paying for anything and everything. Even Valve titles can be tainted by consolitis.
However that isn't the only problem. The software has to support it too. This is very spotty. Some software, like all the apps that come with Windows 7 itself, support it perfectly. All UI elements scale just like they should. However some other software does not, some of it is just fixed size. Worse still, some software half supports it, so for example the UI will be fixed size but the fonts will scale, making everything broken. So you need to get on software makers, not on MS, they already did their part and did it well (try it some time).
However that still isn't the only issue. Another issue is interconnect bandwidth. High resolutions need lots of data to be sent and that starts to be an issue. Single link DVI, and by extension older versions of HDMI (which are electrically the same for video signaling) can only handle 1920x1200@60Hz, about 3Gbps. If you want to double that resolution in each direction you'd need 12Gbps and that is before you start talking things like 120Hz or higher bit depth. DP 1.1 and HDMI 1.4 can handle that to an extent, but of course not much supports them yet. They are getting added to new hardware, but it'll be some time before they are prevalent.
Video memory/GPU power is another issue. Higher resolution hit graphics hardware harder. This is true even just for modern desktops where you have GPU compositing. That doesn't take a ton of GPU power, but it does take a reasonably amount of video RAM. You need about 256MB of VRAM just to do resolutions in the range of 1920x1200 to 2560x1600. It of course just goes up from there. Not a big deal for systems with dedicated cards, but it can be an issue for integrated graphics. Also even still with dedicated cards, 1GB is the max for anything reasonably priced and you'd need that for quad HD resolutions.
Finally there's the simple issue of cost. It is expensive to pack in more pixels. You need more transistors, everything has to be smaller, etc. I'm not saying it can't be done but you aren't going to do it for $200-300 like many of the cheap PC monitors. Of course you then get in to a nasty loop: It costs more to make, so you can't sell as many, which means the fixed costs are spread among less units driving up the unit cost which in turn lowers sales and so on. In the end you could find a really high rez display costing $1000-2000 or something and not having a lot of market for it.
We'll see higher resolution displays at some point, but it is going to take some time. There are many issues to be worked out, it is not a simple "Well they just need to do it!" thing.
What I have found to be very annoying and detrimental to pc sales of games is also the lack of demos for the pc. This is much more about games that are cross platform. I am much more likely to buy it if I can demo it, but it is often the case that you just can't when it is also being released on the PS3 or XBOX. Though I guess in some cases the reverse can happen. I tried batman arkham asylum and the controls (with a game pad with dual analog sticks) were horrible. Pushing up ended up in you going down, down going up. Making it a non-playable game. These kind of things are why I don't by ported pc games without trying them first...
Sorry but it is true. I am a hard core gamer. I've been a game my whole life more or less. I started playing games on an Atari 2600 at my grandpa's house when I was a toddler. Got an NES of my own when I was 6, and I've been playing ever since. Currently, games are my major form of entertainment. I don't watch much TV or movies (don't even have cable) and true to geek form I've never been big on going out to bars/clubs. When I want to entertain myself, I play video games.
I am extremely happy with gaming these days. There are just tons and tons of good games out there. My problem is not finding games to play, it is finding time to play all the games. Good games some out all the time, of all different types. There is just a wonderful range these days. You can find games that are extremely complex and designed for people who practically want to have a post graduate degree in the game before starting play and you can find games that ease you in such that you never need to look at any instructions at all. You can find games of any type, strategy, RPG, shooter, adventure, whatever you like.
I might have time to play all the games I wanted if I just stuck to new ones, but of course just like a good book or favourite movie, I replay old ones too.
If you can't find any good games, if you think everything now is "horrid" that is a statement on you, not on gaming. It means you are being overly fussy, you are looking for reasons not to like things, having unreasonable demands, deciding that everything should be tailor made to your precise wants. It also may mean that you are looking back to a glorious past of gaming where everything was perfect; a past that never was in other words. You may be remembering things as much better than they were.
At any rate I have real trouble finding sympathy/respect for people who claim that gaming is so bad these days. No, it really isn't. You have lots and lots and lots of options of all kinds. Will you like everything? Of course not. However if you can't find some things you like then you need to evaluate why.
I think the console/pc fanboi crap should stop. Pro's and con's to both. Some games lend themselves to either where some are better on PC and others on console. For some people a console is a safer/cheaper investment for others the PC is a more attractive/expensive investment.
Don't say something stupid like consoles are going to make GPU makers go broke, maybe they should change their business/market model rather than expecting society to drop console gaming... Stupid... If NVidia/AMD had it their way we'd all buy a new GPU every year.... That is just ridiculous. If anyone should slow their roll it is the GPU makers.
Also, quit crying about DRM you PC gamer and maybe you will see more PC games... Just a thought from anon.
Maybe if PC games were traditionally commercially successful, or remotely as popular or fun as console games have been for nearly three decades, consoles would have PC itis...
Or perhaps...console games have PCsyndrome, adopting the intricate but ultimately boring menu based gameplay that PC games are as infamous for as final fantasy, or poor jump mechanics, something just about every PC game with a jump feature has.
will take you back to digg. Oh He Who Sees Clitoris Everywhere....
"a $250 one will now play pretty much any game at the highest settings with no problem."
Just wait for Crysis 2 bitches....
Graphics are no longer the end-all and be-all of gaming. Nobody wants to shell out $2500+ every year or two to keep gaming on their PC. Consoles deliver a gaming experience immediately, without installs, driver issues, and hassles. Quit living in the 90s and realize that gaming is making a fundamental shift.
Will there be compelling gaming experiences on PC? Of course, there always will be.
Is console gaming the "poor cousin" of PC gaming? No, it hasn't been since the current generation of consoles. It's different, not worse.
Gaming is being redefined not by the number of polys you can draw, not by the frames per second you can push, but by the gameplay itself and the interaction of players. Would a game like Minecraft benefit from an enhanced framerate? Would LittleBigPlanet get better if there was a mouse and keyboard option? Did the XBox's lower end graphics really hurt PacMan Championship DX or Limbo? Was Mass Effect 2 really any better on PC? No.
Time to stop being a platform fanboy and realize that a REA gamer enjoys games wherever they are found, and that graphics are not important to gameplay.
I've been gaming since then as well and completely disagree with you on that, but it has nothing to do with the PC vs. Console debate which will rage on forever because people just cant let it go and enjoy their games wherever they play them at. I've played PLENTY of amazing games and some recently that are in my top games of all time, you cant say stuff like Mass Effect, Oblivion, Fallout, Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain and the list goes on arent amazing games, they smoke pretty much everything I used to play back in the day. Now if you want to go into all the Wii, Kinect and Move shovelware for the masses then I would tend to agree with you :-)
I will disagree with the premise that the emphasis on console development is as harmful to innovation as is implied. I will concede that games which are developed initially for a console are going to suffer from many of the points that are listed. However, many of those issues are more due to the fact that some games benefit more from a given control interface.
As a gaming platform, the PC only has a few very specific advantages over console games; Bleeding edge graphics, Ease of use for games that work better with mouse and keyboard (RTS games, FPS Shooters), and looser restrictions on the games content.
I do not consider high level graphics to be especially indicative of innovation. Once in a while you are going to end up with some spectacular new rendering tech that involves a previously underused or unknown method of rendering geometry. But texture compression and a higher polygon count are not innovative; They are iterative.
As far as ease of control goes, that cuts both ways. You are not going to see as many high level sports titles, platformers, fighters. You also do not see much in the way of games like Wii sports, Kinect, or Guitar Hero / Rockband. All other game types are typically a wash, though racing games tend to favor Consoles. Assassins Creed gave us some of the best interactive environments to ever come around. The Grand Theft Auto series gave us wide open do anything environments and GTA3 was a PS2 game.
In any event, developers and publishers chase the money, and Console titles pay best. My concern is that many publishers are now chasing the iPod / mobile market for games. We will see how that turns out, but if it does become the dominant platform, your precious PC will fare even worse than it does now.
END COMMUNICATION
well then you are a bunch of stuck up people who wouldn't no a good game if ti hit them in the head.
And compared to me, you are a noob gamer.
My point being - the time you do something doesn't in and of itself prove you qare corredct OR lend any logical weight what so ever.
You got a problem? list is specifically. This 'Things were better in my day' logical fallacy pisses me off the older I get.
Games are so much better now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How long have they all been packaged with the required free headsets?
Even if your Xbox 360 console didn't come with a headset, there's a jack for a standard 2.5 mm headset on the bottom of every Xbox 360 controller. So you can just unplug the headset from the cordless or mobile phone that you may already have and plug it into the bottom of the controller.
What, they don't come with headsets just like pc's don't?
As I understand it, most modern laptops and some desktop PC monitors come with a built-in microphone.
I don't think the formula is quite so simple. Basically, no matter how wide the screen, the limit should be 180 degrees of view. With your formula, a 6:1 ratio screen would give you a 405 degree view! I think in practice, they keep the 90 degree field of view and just chop off the top and bottom parts that would have shown up on a 4:3 screen. Example: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/08/widescreen-and-fov.html
"Such as?"
What are these great games that used to be made in significant numbers, that are now no longer made?
Plenty of games are coming out now that have absolutely no ability to save wherever and whenever you want
Would you rather have continuous automatic save? It saves in the background whenever you deal or take damage, and there are ways to do that in the background without causing lag. So when you turn off the game and turn it back on, you're right back where you were, up to the second. But when you die...
And click to move worked fine for Diablo.
I never had a chance to play the original Diablo. How does it distinguish between tap to move and tap to attack, especially in tight quarters?
You're telling me that my complaint about the game acting like it's on a console, even though it's on a computer... Is because it was designed to act like it's on a console, even though it's on a computer?
It's possible to plug a computer into a TV and have it replace a console. Dell even makes the Zino PC that looks like a cross between a Mac mini and a GameCube.
There are a very large number of PC gamers who do not have gamepads handy.
Any emulator fan will tell you there's nothing wrong with arrow keys, Z, and X, while you wait for your $15 Logitech gamepad to ship. Or plug in your Xbox 360 wired controller and it'll Just Work.
The whole complaint about "consoleitis" is that everything is now behaving like it's a console game ported to a PC.
Console makers dictate that one must be "at least this tall" to develop for consoles. A developer operating out of home offices has to develop its console-style games for PCs, especially home theater PCs.
It's quite simple, you select a resolution, derive an aspect ratio, create a perspective transform, and presto, all 3D games can run at any resolution.
And when you close the game and return to the desktop, some of your applications other than games will have unreadably small text because they set the size of on-screen objects in device pixels, not inches, millimeters, or CSS pixels (1/2688 of a viewing distance), and they've never been tested even with DPI setting: Large size (120 DPI).
Please bring back the good old days of games developed FOR the PC
They are developed for the PC, just not your PC. It could be that they're developed for a home theater PC.
Console fan boys like to claim that computers cost more
They do if you have multiple gamers in the house. Console games are far more likely than PC games to offer split- or otherwise shared-screen multiplayer. Without shared-screen, you're limited to LAN multiplayer (and buying a separate gaming PC and copy of the game per player) or online multiplayer (and players in the same household never getting a chance to play against each other). In addition, there are several genres that work far better shared-screen than online, such as fighting games, and major PC game developers tend to ignore these genres entirely because few people have a big enough monitor to fit four people. Developers by and large don't bother adding modes designed for a home theater PC and gamepads because few people have the family PC in the same room as the TV.
and completely ignore the fact that they already have and need a computer
A computer good enough for homework and Facebook is not necessarily good enough for the latest blockbuster PC game. A typical homework-and-Facebook PC has an Intel CPU and an Intel GMA (Graphics My ***) graphics. You might recommend putting in an NVIDIA or AMD video card, but that doesn't work for every PC. It could be years old, with nonexistent upgrade options. It could be a laptop, likewise with nonexistent upgrade options. It could come with Mac OS X or Linux instead of Windows, limiting game selection. A household with four people and four homework-and-Facebook PCs might have the money to upgrade only one of them to a gaming PC, providing for only one player, where a single console and extra gamepads could provide for multiple players.
90% of console games (at least ones I want to play) end up on the PC.
As I understand it, the closest PC counterpart to Animal Crossing is MySims, and the closest PC counterpart to Mario Kart is Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing. But what's the closest PC counterpart to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Bomberman, Super Mario Galaxy, Katamari Damacy, Spyro, Metal Gear, or WarioWare?
I already (obviously) have a PC, so why spend $200-300?
To upgrade the homework-and-Facebook PCs to gaming PCs.
"Inflammation of the Console"?
That sounds like an apt description of the heat issues leading to the three red lights failure on Xbox 360 consoles. At least the article is inflammatory enough.
The keyboard and mouse are just better for some kinds of games
And gamepads are better for others. Good luck playing a 2- or 4-player fighting game like Street Fighter series or Super Smash Bros. series on a keyboard.
You cannot take a game made for console and port it directly to PC. It just won't work in most cases.
On the contrary, it works so well that an emulator can do it automatically. Just plug in a couple wired Xbox 360 gamepads or Logitech gamepads and you're set for more affordable multiplayer than any LAN or online game could ever offer.
Ever notice that console games tend to cost quite a bit more
Ever notice that PC game publishers tend to charge extra for multiplayer? Because of the dearth of PC games supporting shared-screen or spawn installation, a PC game might be $40 for one player, $80 for two, or $160 for four. New console games, on the other hand, are $60 even if you have two to four gamers in the household.
than their PC equivalent?
What is the "PC equivalent" of something like Super Mario Galaxy, Katamari Damacy, Spyro, or Super Smash Bros.?
the previous generation of consoles does not 'become a doorstopper' when the new one comes along.
Once the new console has been out for a while, the console maker can shut off the online play for the old console's games, as 0123456 pointed out.
Not only did buying a PS3 not make my PS2 stop working
You don't need to buy a PLAYSTATION 3 console to make your PlayStation 2 console's laser pickup die. It'll wear out on its own. Eventually, the supply of working consoles will dwindle, and it'll become difficult to buy a working replacement. The problem isn't even limited to the console itself. Some HDTVs already have trouble upscaling the 240p video signal from fifth-generation (Saturn, PS1, N64) and older consoles; instead, they expect 480i like what the sixth-gen (DC, PS2, GCN, Xbox) put out.
Backwards compatibility in consoles isn't really needed.
In handhelds, on the other hand, it's nice not to have to carry a Game Boy, a Game Boy Color, and a Game Boy Advance to play all their games; a GBA or GBA SP is enough.
New games generally work on older computers with reduced graphic settings.
But there's still a limit. Even if I take Crysis down to 640x480, can I run it on an eight-year-old desktop PC? Can I run it on a one-year-old netbook?
I can use my PC for more than just playing games
But how many people can use your PC at once? Console games are more likely to allow four players on one large monitor.
Minecraft is about the lowest quality graphics that I can tolerate
Let me guess: you can't tolerate La Mulana, Eversion, I Wanna Be the Guy, or other games with retraux art style that calls back to the 8-bit days. Do I understand you correctly?
I want the graphics power of a card of two years ago in a $35 card with no fan.
Get an AMD CPU, and the motherboard for it will have a Radeon GPU built into the northbridge, which handily outperforms the Intel GMA (Graphics My ***).
But if games stopped always demanding more and more GPU oomph
You could try turning down the settings.
Even having a PS3, XBox, and Wii, can you post to slashdot on them?
I've posted to Slashdot from "Internet Channel powered by Opera" on my Wii console. Besides, having a PC with onboard Intel graphics-my-ass (GMA), can you game on it? But seriously, the decision here is between buying A. a homework-and-Facebook PC and a game console or B. a gaming PC. In a household with multiple gamers, the decision becomes A. four homework-and-Facebook PCs and one game console with three extra controllers or B. four gaming PCs, and this price comparison starts to tilt toward the console.
with HDTV, they get high-def and on the big ol' 52" HDTV versus their 17"/20" PC monitor (or whatever is free these days).
The 52" HDTV probably has VGA and HDMI inputs, which can take any video signal that the PC can produce. Why isn't it more common to connect a PC to an HDTV?
If you don't push the PC engine now, will you be ready for the next generation of Consoles?
The PC Engine was between the third (NES) and fourth (MD/SNES) generations of video game consoles.
But seriously:
Size of market is a very poor metric for determining earning potential.
A few Slashdot users tell me that the market for PC games with a mode designed for the home theater PC is so small that it's worth ignoring, despite that the home theater PC is the only platform for same-screen multiplayer video games that is available to the smallest developers. I can dig up citations if you wish.
can you play a PS3 game on a PS2?
No, but I can play a PSP game on a GBA.
Some new games work on older hardware some don't.
And inability to concisely express system requirements is one of the major faults of PC gaming.
Seeing that I play single player games or multiplayer over the internet, this is not a problem for me.
Say you have little Abigail and little Chester who live together and want to play together, but only one of the PCs in the household is a gaming PC, and the head of household has bought only one copy of the game for them to share. If they were to rely on multiplayer over the Internet, Chester would have to set up a play date to visit the home of a friend who also has a copy of the game just to play with Abigail, and it would be rawther impolite for Chester to ignore this friend and concentrate on Abigail. That's a severe violation of play date etiquette as I understand it.
Also, it may be difficult to connect a console to a computer monitor for single player use (my CRT monitor would most likely work with this as long as the console has a VGA (or RGB) output, but most LCDs and even CRTs wouldn't).
You have a point about Wii, which appears to have only "consumer electronics" style video outputs: composite, S-Video, and YPbPr component. But all PLAYSTATION 3 consoles and all Xbox 360 consoles after the first few batches have HDMI out, and many newer LCD monitors tend to have HDMI in or DVI in with HDMI audio support.
OK, I'll try to explain: SMB style games with those graphics are OK - the graphics do not have to be 3D, but they have to be high enough resolution. On the other hand, games like NetHack are out. Also, some 3D games have very low resolution models and textures, to the point that it is difficult to recognize what I am looking at.
So allow me to rephrase your standard as I understand it: if you don't have at least Xbox/Wii class video hardware and comparable asset authoring capacity, keep it 2D.
Given a choice between to very similar games, I'd pick the one with better graphics.
Consider a choice between a video game that is free and Free vs. one that is proprietary and $50 per player. Or a video game that runs on hardware you own vs. a video game that needs a new CPU, a new GPU, and more RAM. At what point do graphics override other considerations?
Why should I be forced to replay parts of a game that I don't want to replay just because you decided that I should have to?
Would you prefer that the game autosaved continuously? Then you could stop and resume the game at any point, but you'd still have to replay parts with a new character because the game has saved the fact that your first character has been killed in action.
There's nothing about console hardware that prevents arbitrary saves
Except that writing to the Wii's internal SSD is apparently very, very slow. WarioWare DIY for Nintendo DS takes three "bounces" (about 2 seconds) to save, while WarioWare DIY Showcase for the Wii takes about nine "bounces" (about 6 seconds) to save roughly the same amount and type of data.
Every time someone makes a comment asking "why would we need" or "who needs" when referring to advancements in technology -- in this case, graphics and realism, I just want to gut that moron and leave 'em to bleed. If we all listened to you, we'd still be in the dark ages with our 128k memory and dial up internet. You're all the same. Making excuses for other people or thinking out of your own pockets is a pet peeve of mine. Where would the world be if early adopters that don't mind paying a premium to fund excellence such as myself didn't exist? I hope you enjoy mediocre experiences for the rest of you life. /rant
If I wanted to play with Joypads, I'd play on my PS3 or Xbox360.
Unfortunately, you can't always do that when the developer of the game you want to play isn't a big enough company to afford the overhead that the console makers require before they'll grant a license to develop for their consoles. For example, one console maker requires all developers to have a dedicated office separate from any home, but a small indie developer might not be able to afford to lease a dedicated office, instead choosing to work out of home offices with teleconferencing.
I'm guessing the bar for entry on these games being made for PC would be lower if people used their PC to drive large HDTVs, and devs catered to them.
Major devs don't cater to HTPC owners because not enough people set up HTPCs. I'm working on an article about the lack of PCs driving TVs. If you have suggestions for how to better market HTPCs to the public, I'd appreciate your comments on its talk page.
the only cost difference is the price of extra licenses
Darn right. Will mommy buy a 4-pack of Steam game licenses for $160 or a single console disc for $60? Or once a game is older, will mommy buy a 4-pack of Steam game licenses for $80 on sale or a single used disc from GameStop for $30?
Or find a way to keep everything on a single screen like Smash Bros. or most fighters.
This is exactly what I was planning on doing until CronoCloud and other Slashdot users gave me a reality check about the lack of PCs driving TVs.
When dealing with things like Eyefinity, you actually do want to expand the FOV (up to 360 if necessary). Otherwise you won't be seeing something as off-kilter as 6:1 in a non-wraparound display arrangement.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's not like the PC somehow prevents them from making a shared screen game.
Because of the lack of deployed home theater PCs, most home PCs are connected to 13" to 19" PC monitors, not 24" or bigger TV monitors. It's more difficult to fit two to four adult bodies around the smaller monitors that are already connected to PCs than around the big screen TVs that are far more likely to be connected to consoles. A lot of TVs made before 2006 are SDTVs and don't even have a VGA or HDMI input for PC signals, and even HDTVs aren't always in the same room as the family PC. People would have to buy a separate $500 small-form-factor PC with non-Intel graphics for shared-screen PC gaming, such as a Dell Inspiron Zino, Gateway SX, or Mac mini, and because there are next to no major-label shared-screen games exclusive to the PC, members of the general public buying a set-top video gaming device will almost invariably choose a console (or even two consoles) over a PC. People could move the family PC to the living room, but most people don't want to A. hog the TV for homework and Facebook or B. move the family PC back and forth between the desk and TV multiple times a day.
dial-up and charged by the minute
Dial-up Internet access in the United States was typically billed at a flat monthly rate. A few ISPs imposed a limit of 100 to 150 hours a month to free up modem pools.
Either my friend would come to me or I would come to him
A lot of other Slashdot users explain to me that they play online because A. their friends live hundreds of miles or hundreds of km away and they can't afford to be a frequent flyer, or B. they play with strangers because their friends don't play the same video games.
If the players live in different places
But when they happen not to live in different places, it's nice to have the option to split the screen. Most major PC game developers don't even give HTPC owners that option, and they completely ignore genres where the option would be easiest to code, such as fighting games, Bomberman style games, etc.
when I lived with my family, I didn't like the same games as my brother or sister
When you lived with your family, you probably engaged in play dates, where you would visit a classmate's home or a classmate would visit yours. Without a mode for play dates, if video games are online-only, what are kids supposed to do when they still have video game time left but have run out of Internet time for the day? You also probably were forced to go to periodic family reunions where you could meet members of your extended family, and unless you're substantially older than I and grew up before video games, some of these relatives liked the same games as you, unlike your brother or sister.
But perhaps I just have a warped sense of priorities from having organized the video game table at my extended family's reunions for over a decade. And perhaps I just have a warped sense of priorities from having managed to like games that a lot of other people liked as well, such as Tetris, Mario Kart, and Smash Bros.