An Interesting Article About the Health of PC Gaming

[Raiden]

Why Was The PC Launch of Rage Such A "Cluster!@#$"?

An interesting, if unintentional, barometer of the way things might be headed with the demographics of gaming on consoles and PCs.

I'm not really involved with PC gaming, so I wanted to hear what the PC gamers here had to say about this.

Read some of the comments, too...a lot of them are ragey, but some of them are well thought out.

[Advent]

Well, in my case at least, as long as a console game works on PC, I couldn't care less how good the graphics are. Developers should make sure that their games carry a minimal amount of bugs and such though.

As for the 'PC vs Console' debate, I've always been a PC gamer, and I don't think I have anything to worry about. Debate or not, a PC will always be more useful then a console.

[Human No More]

People seemed to have been hoping that this would be a game that proved the value of owning a PC over a console. But instead they got a game that they feel cut some corners to level the experience between console and PC.

This hits the nail on the head.

Consoles distract development effort from making a PC game really good, and introduce artificial limitations where the graphics are substandard, or there are few to no options for control remapping. The number of bad console ports I've seen is infuriating, even in otherwise good games (e.g. Mass Effect 2 is a good game, but its problems, such as the weird controls, are clearly down to making it work on a console). Games CAN work on a console without compromising the PC game, but takes more time and effort. PCs have every advantage over consoles, from orders of magnitude more power to more customisability and resolutions consoles only get a decade later, the only reason we even see console ports of any game is because consoles have mass appeal.

Ah well, all it means in the end is another developer I'm not going to support.

[Isard]

Kotaku is a bull**** rag that prints garbage to generate pageviews.

I'm not even reading the article.

[Raiden]

Originally Posted by Isard

Kotaku is a bull**** rag that prints garbage to generate pageviews.

I'm not even reading the article.

An interview with Carmack is bull****?

Okay, if that's what you really think...

[Tsyal Makto]

I'm mostly a PC gamer, but all the crap with Rage (which I currently am fighting, and even with the ATI driver fix, no luck But maybe it's because I have a 512MB card, so maybe my system's underpowered regardless), I'm tempted to pick up a 360. Like Advent, I am not obsessed with graphics, moreso a good story and other factors. With that said, most linear games such as FPS, I'll probably play on a 360. Other games, such as RPGs and open-world games (Fallout, Just Cause, etc), I'll continue to PC game with, because I like to use 3rd party mods which are obviously unavailable on consoles.

Another reason I'll probably get into 360 gaming is because there's so few of my IRL friends who PC game (only two, actually. One for Portal 2, one for TF2). They're all on 360s.

[Pa'li Makto]

I think that developers need to seriously consider PC gamers as a major rival to console gamers and worthy of greater consideration and respect when it comes to developing and distributing games rather then the porting of game titles to the PC being thought of as an afterthought.Sometimes the porting of console games to the PC can be quite rushed and like Rush and other titles, the games can contain considerable bugs and glitches that haven't been ironed out. Also graphics can be limited to fit into the consoles capabilities while the PC can easily surpass this but can't due to graphics being toned down and not beefed up when the port has been distributed.

Overall I'm a retro console gamer by heart so I value automatically implemented hard to decent difficulties,gameplay, story and re playability rather than slick graphics and good physics effects though I play the PC for certain titles and can sympathise with the hardcore PC gamer in regards to such issues such as bad game ports. Also since I use the consoles of N64 and Gamecube it makes me frustrated sometimes that some interesting game titles such as Red Dead Redemption and Fable 2 are not available on PC and only on the new gen consoles such as Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

[Isard]

Pa'li, consoles and PC's have never been rivals.

Just like Seabuscuit wasn't a rival to a Nascar.

[Pa'li Makto]

They should be, if they aren't already Isard..Otherwise how will developers take notice of PC gamers?

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Consoles distract development effort from making a PC game really good, and introduce artificial limitations where the graphics are substandard, or there are few to no options for control remapping. The number of bad console ports I've seen is infuriating, even in otherwise good games (e.g. Mass Effect 2 is a good game, but its problems, such as the weird controls, are clearly down to making it work on a console). Games CAN work on a console without compromising the PC game, but takes more time and effort. PCs have every advantage over consoles, from orders of magnitude more power to more customisability and resolutions consoles only get a decade later, the only reason we even see console ports of any game is because consoles have mass appeal.

Ah well, all it means in the end is another developer I'm not going to support.

Indeed.

Gaming on consoles is like reverting back to the 90s when people still played Doom and Quake with arrow keys before switching over to mouse and wasd. Not to mention the obsolete hardware, even though I'm more interested in gameplay over graphics. It's really annoying when games have been dumbed down in functionality when making them more suitable for consoles.

Originally Posted by Isard

Pa'li, consoles and PC's have never been rivals.

Just like Seabuscuit wasn't a rival to a Nascar.

In a technical sense this is true, but if you sell more horses to people than cars, then people use horses rather than cars if they don't know that there are advantages in having a car over a horse.

Anyhow, silly analogy is silly.