Is PC gaming being actively rejected?

[Deleted]

First off I'm a PC gamer, haven't had a console in a good while now. This isn't a console VS PC debate, so please just leave that shit at the door.

The big launches this Winter (DA:I, AC:Unity, FC4, CODAW) have all been the first foray into what most people would classify as "next gen" (In my opinion normal PC gaming but w/e). But all four have had insanely high minimum specs, to the point where on launch they either flat out won't run on Dual Core, or are crippled by them.

Now this isn't because they actually need those 4+ cores, it's because they've been designed not to work on them. They're hard coded to run on core#3 (in some cases), meaning a quad core is a must (what with core 1 being core#0).

It's kind of obvious that publishers are moving into doing this on a level we've not really seen. Before you'd get a game that'd run, get bug fixes, but still wasn't fully "optimized" like a console version. Now you get a version broken on purpose for some users, and not optimized at all for others. Then of course there's WatchDogs, wherein the engine was nerfed for PC.

I'm coming to my update time, and quite frankly I'm not sure I can be bothered with PC this time round. If publishers are going to make me run .dll injections just to run their games, why bother?

What do you guys think, is this just laziness on their part or an active effort to move budget PC gamers back to the console?

[Deleted]

Most likely because it's easier to not put any effort into optimizing the games when it's consoles.

[SL1200]

They have so much more control over the console games. I don't like it, but i don't blame them either.

[Deleted]

Most likely because it's easier to not put any effort into optimizing the games when it's consoles.

They're actively optimized for consoles, they're not optimized for PC.

That's sort of the issue right now.

[Deleted]

Dunno, I have AC: Unity on PS4 and the first week with stutters and stuff passed now. Even their patch didnt help.

[Zonned]

Shitty console ports date back to the olden days try playing the original ports of FF7 and FF8 by eidos. It is just the way of things on PC.

On the bright side you also get a huge library of awesome games unique to PC. Honestly I don't classify myself because I keep a gaming PC and consoles, thats way I have access to everything.

[Deleted]

Shitty console ports date back to the olden days try playing the original ports of FF7 and FF8 by eidos. It is just the way of things on PC.

On the bright side you also get a huge library of awesome games unique to PC. Honestly I don't classify myself because I keep a gaming PC and consoles, thats way I have access to everything.

Back in those days it was way more chaotic, they almost couldn't optimize because you had way more options.

Now you're green or red for GPU, and red or blue for CPU.

I'm most likely changing to console with a laptop for any specific PC titles.

[Deleted]

I certainly don't think it is an elaborate plot to get people to buy consoles. It is more along the lines of time and money, focusing optimization on three specs (consoles) vs hundreds of specs (PC, also slightly overestimated).

And even then on a side note, even PC exclusive games, don't have a track record of being particular well optimized. Hell even take a look at Blizzard that for the longest time was PC exclusive and you'll see for a long time, running their games at max settings, would never get you fluid 60 frames per second, no matter how beasty your PC was.

In the end, some companies will dish out trashy optimised things (AC:unity being a prime example right now), and as long as people continue to buy it (and support it) it likely isn't going to change at any point. Honestly if we as costumers also could limit our own demands for more pixels and flare, that costs us more and more frames if the industry can't keep up with it, we would likely be in a better place right now.

[Deleted]

I certainly don't think it is an elaborate plot to get people to buy consoles. It is more along the lines of time and money, focusing optimization on three specs (consoles) vs hundreds of specs (PC, also slightly overestimated).

And even then on a side note, even PC exclusive games, don't have a track record of being particular well optimized. Hell even take a look at Blizzard that for the longest time was PC exclusive and you'll see for a long time, running their games at max settings, would never get you fluid 60 frames per second, no matter how beasty your PC was.

WoW is a beast of its own, with an engine so patchworked I'm amazed it runs as well as it does.

Except they actually wrote the code specifically to make only quad+ core CPUs run their engine. You can make it run on dual cores with a simple injector, and it runs just fine when you do. That's why I find this round of it interesting, you don't just hard code in core#3. Nobody does that shit, it's basic industry standards that they ignored.

[xChurch]

When you buy a console it comes with high end hardware already installed, but most people already have a computer they've owned for years. I doubt many people would upgrade their computer just to play some new game when they could just play it on a console.

[Deleted]

WoW is a beast of its own, with an engine so patchworked I'm amazed it runs as well as it does.

Except they actually wrote the code specifically to make only quad+ core CPUs run their engine. You can make it run on dual cores with a simple injector, and it runs just fine when you do. That's why I find this round of it interesting, you don't just hard code in core#3. Nobody does that shit, it's basic industry standards that they ignored.

That is outside of my expertise, so can't comment too much on that. Other than yes, it easy, and it is not serving the customer what they deserve.

[Deleted]

When you buy a console it comes with high end hardware already installed, but most people already have a computer they've owned for years. I doubt many people would upgrade their computer just to play some new game when they could just play it on a console.

Er consoles do not have high end hardware, it's midrange. Most of the horsepower comes from programmer magic.

That's the point, I can buy a PS4 bundle with FC4 for £350, or a new rig for £800 simply because the requirements are being inflated.

[Reeve]

First off I'm a PC gamer, haven't had a console in a good while now. This isn't a console VS PC debate, so please just leave that shit at the door.

The big launches this Winter (DA:I, AC:Unity, FC4, CODAW) have all been the first foray into what most people would classify as "next gen" (In my opinion normal PC gaming but w/e). But all four have had insanely high minimum specs, to the point where on launch they either flat out won't run on Dual Core, or are crippled by them.

Now this isn't because they actually need those 4+ cores, it's because they've been designed not to work on them. They're hard coded to run on core#3 (in some cases), meaning a quad core is a must (what with core 1 being core#0).

It's kind of obvious that publishers are moving into doing this on a level we've not really seen. Before you'd get a game that'd run, get bug fixes, but still wasn't fully "optimized" like a console version. Now you get a version broken on purpose for some users, and not optimized at all for others. Then of course there's WatchDogs, wherein the engine was nerfed for PC.

I'm coming to my update time, and quite frankly I'm not sure I can be bothered with PC this time round. If publishers are going to make me run .dll injections just to run their games, why bother?

What do you guys think, is this just laziness on their part or an active effort to move budget PC gamers back to the console?

I can't remember the last time I had a dual core PC. I've been running 4+ cores for at least 4 years now, so I'm not sure why having modern PC games utilize what's currently base functionality is a bad thing.

[zealo]

When you buy a console it comes with high end hardware already installed, but most people already have a computer they've owned for years. I doubt many people would upgrade their computer just to play some new game when they could just play it on a console.

The current consoles have mid end hardware at the level that was considered good in 2011 or so at this point.

What it do have is much much better optimisation than PC because the devs know to 100% what hardware it will run on.

[Deleted]

I can't remember the last time I had a dual core PC. I've been running 4+ cores for at least 4 years now, so I'm not sure why having modern PC games utilize what's currently base functionality is a bad thing.

It'd be fine if the games actually needed those 4 cores, they don't. The performance isn't going to be as good as a high end quad core (but tbh CPU has little impact most of the time on FPS) but it can run just fine.

They're artificially using it by hard coding in a silly core "optimization".

[Begrudge]

duel cores are so old now what do you expect?

[Yvaelle]

It's an active effort to move away from the PC market that all the major publishers announced years ago, as a direct result of Steam and platforms like it.

Now that ~99% of PC games are digitally distributed, the biggest advantages of publishing houses are ruined - they used to handle manufacture, distribution, legal issues across dozens of countries, and international marketing efforts. Now that all PC gamers use Steam and platforms like it, the publishers have nothing to offer development studios except investment capital - and that doesn't justify their enormous cut of the proceeds.

At the same time, the tools and development time needed to make games has significantly declined - engines like Unreal 4 and Unity, along with art tools like Blender and 3DS max - have improved by orders of magnitude over the last decade: greatly lowering the barrier to entry into game development. These two trends have enabled a booming Indie game scene on PC, which the major publishing houses know they cannot compete with.

On PC, they can drop like $150 million or something while making Mass Effect 3, or $120 million on SWTOR, or etc - and meanwhile another team can make Portal or Minecraft with only a handful of people and a shoestring budget: as long as they have a unique gameplay element or good storyline.

Given the above, the major publishers have known their oligopoly over the PC market is over since ~2007 - which is why - despite booming PC game growth, they frequently come out and give public lectures on how the PC game market is dead. On consoles though, publishers still reign supreme - at least until Steam hits consoles, and Unity / Unreal develop native console compatibility - then the publishers will cling to the past, fail to adapt, and die - like the RIAA.

It is an active and deliberate attempt to sabotage the PC game market by breaking their own games and blaming it on the medium - to poison the well - in the hopes of forcing people to convert to consoles, like the last humans of a dying universe, huddled around a dwindling star.

[Deleted]

I dunno man. The only one out of those you mention I've played is DA:I. I don't have any consoles either, prefer PC so that was my only option. My PC is maybe 6 years old now? And it runs DA:I without any problems really on max. I get occasional stutters so I've turned a few things down to medium and it runs really smoothly. Had one crash in the 140 hours I've put into it so far. I sort of get confused hearing about these people who are like "oh you absolutley need to do XYZ or it won't run for shit on PC" or whatever. Oh, to be fair actually, I did replace my GPU a few months ago. Though only because my old card didn't support newer versions of directx, and the card I replaced it with isn't exactly top end or anything. It wasn't even much of a performance upgrade, I just needed a newer card so that games that only ran on newer versions of directx would be playable. The CPU, mobo and memory is all ancient though. I don't get what is wrong with people's PCs where they struggle so much to run things when a 6 year old heap of junk does just fine. It's not even overclocked. Hell, I don't even look after it, the fans are full of dust, I clean the case out maybe once every 2 years, the airflow is awful and my CPU is still using the stock cooler. It's not even been reformatted in those 6 years. And still don't have performance issues.

Are people still using the PC they bought when windows95 was current, or something?

[Deleted]

It's an active effort to move away from the PC market that all the major publishers announced years ago, as a direct result of Steam and platforms like it.

Now that ~99% of PC games are digitally distributed, the biggest advantages of publishing houses are ruined - they used to handle manufacture, distribution, legal issues across dozens of countries, and international marketing efforts. Now that all PC gamers use Steam and platforms like it, the publishers have nothing to offer development studios except investment capital - and that doesn't justify their enormous cut of the proceeds.

At the same time, the tools and development time needed to make games has significantly declined - engines like Unreal 4 and Unity, along with art tools like Blender and 3DS max - have improved by orders of magnitude over the last decade: greatly lowering the barrier to entry into game development. These two trends have enabled a booming Indie game scene on PC, which the major publishing houses know they cannot compete with.

On PC, they can drop like $150 million or something while making Mass Effect 3, or $120 million on SWTOR, or etc - and meanwhile another team can make Portal or Minecraft with only a handful of people and a shoestring budget: as long as they have a unique gameplay element or good storyline.

Given the above, the major publishers have known their oligopoly over the PC market is over since ~2007 - which is why - despite booming PC game growth, they frequently come out and give public lectures on how the PC game market is dead. On consoles though, publishers still reign supreme - at least until Steam hits consoles, and Unity / Unreal develop native console compatibility - then the publishers will cling to the past, fail to adapt, and die - like the RIAA.

It is an active and deliberate attempt to sabotage the PC game market by breaking their own games and blaming it on the medium - to poison the well - in the hopes of forcing people to convert to consoles, like the last humans of a dying universe, huddled around a dwindling star.

I'm reporting Yvaelle, you keep breaking threads with your eloquent rationality.

[Zonned]

It's an active effort to move away from the PC market that all the major publishers announced years ago, as a direct result of Steam and platforms like it.

Now that ~99% of PC games are digitally distributed, the biggest advantages of publishing houses are ruined - they used to handle manufacture, distribution, legal issues across dozens of countries, and international marketing efforts. Now that all PC gamers use Steam and platforms like it, the publishers have nothing to offer development studios except investment capital - and that doesn't justify their enormous cut of the proceeds.

At the same time, the tools and development time needed to make games has significantly declined - engines like Unreal 4 and Unity, along with art tools like Blender and 3DS max - have improved by orders of magnitude over the last decade: greatly lowering the barrier to entry into game development. These two trends have enabled a booming Indie game scene on PC, which the major publishing houses know they cannot compete with.

On PC, they can drop like $150 million or something while making Mass Effect 3, or $120 million on SWTOR, or etc - and meanwhile another team can make Portal or Minecraft with only a handful of people and a shoestring budget: as long as they have a unique gameplay element or good storyline.

Given the above, the major publishers have known their oligopoly over the PC market is over since ~2007 - which is why - despite booming PC game growth, they frequently come out and give public lectures on how the PC game market is dead. On consoles though, publishers still reign supreme - at least until Steam hits consoles, and Unity / Unreal develop native console compatibility - then the publishers will cling to the past, fail to adapt, and die - like the RIAA.

It is an active and deliberate attempt to sabotage the PC game market by breaking their own games and blaming it on the medium - to poison the well - in the hopes of forcing people to convert to consoles, like the last humans of a dying universe, huddled around a dwindling star.

Alot of the big console games still make it to PC but they always feel like half baked afterthought jobs and are many times worse than their console counterparts.