How do they get away with releasing games like Skyrim on consoles?

[Jegsimmons]

I'm currently typing this while I stare at a screenfreeze on my TV.

After battling through a fort siege while the framerate consistently spluttered and wheezed it finally locked up on the last guy. I'd previously quit the game and reloaded because on my way to the siege the game kept stuttering every two or three steps and I hoped that stopping and starting again would remedy the problem. It did not.

Now, if I was playing this on a PC I could turn the specs down and hope it runs smoother, but as a console gamer my only choice is to reset and hope I can get through it without another freeze, just like every other time there is a problem with a console game (which has become far more frequent since developers were given the option to release patches, I notice).

This is the exact experience I've had with every Bethesda game I've played, although I must admit Skyrim has ran considerably better than either of the Fallout games, so I have to ask: How do Bethesda get away with repeatedly releasing these games on consoles when the hardware is barely capable of supporting them?

That's like Ford selling me a car with pedals instead of an engine.

ever think maby you have a shitty xbox or disc?
and they get away with it because they release the game on consoles....thats the secret...just release it.
not everything has to be on PC.

 

[Epona]

On the NES it was impossible to play any game for more than ~2 contiguous hours, because the system would overheat. Usually it would take the form of moving to the next screen and everything would be garbled, or sometimes the next stage would just fail to load.

Mario, Zelda, Mega man, etc all of these great games on the NES had an inevitable crashing problem.

Just your NES, I spent many a summer days playing NES nonstop.

 

[Argtee]

Sounds like you're doing something wrong. Stop doing stuff wrong

I play on PS3, and I've never had anything this bad happen.
Even with the framerate problems, it was never that bad.

...Maybe it's just you?

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm currently typing this while I stare at a screenfreeze on my TV.

After battling through a fort siege while the framerate consistently spluttered and wheezed it finally locked up on the last guy. I'd previously quit the game and reloaded because on my way to the siege the game kept stuttering every two or three steps and I hoped that stopping and starting again would remedy the problem. It did not.

Now, if I was playing this on a PC I could turn the specs down and hope it runs smoother, but as a console gamer my only choice is to reset and hope I can get through it without another freeze, just like every other time there is a problem with a console game (which has become far more frequent since developers were given the option to release patches, I notice).

This is the exact experience I've had with every Bethesda game I've played, although I must admit Skyrim has ran considerably better than either of the Fallout games, so I have to ask: How do Bethesda get away with repeatedly releasing these games on consoles when the hardware is barely capable of supporting them?

That's like Ford selling me a car with pedals instead of an engine.

Did you purchase this title?

If so, you answered your own question.

 

[isometry]

On the NES it was impossible to play any game for more than ~2 contiguous hours, because the system would overheat. Usually it would take the form of moving to the next screen and everything would be garbled, or sometimes the next stage would just fail to load.

Mario, Zelda, Mega man, etc all of these great games on the NES had an inevitable crashing problem.

Just your NES, I spent many a summer days playing NES nonstop.

That's good to know, although it wasn't just my NES in the neighborhood that had this problem. This was in Hawaii, and though it didn't get much past 80 degrees F, we were near the ocean so maybe it had something to do with the humidity. The electrical contacts on the cartridges would quickly corrode and become rusty if the games weren't put away in their protective sleeves (the humidity is enough that leaving bread or potato chips uncovered for 20 minutes will let them go stale).

But anyway, I'm glad to know that that was a local problem that didn't effect everyone. Then again, I guess the modern console freezing issues of today are the same way.

 

[SpAc3man]

Skyrim pushes the limits of what the consoles a capable of. To fix your lagging issue you should use the wait function to wait around for around 30 in-game days doing nothing. Most doors, bodies, dropped items should have reset after that time which will reduce your save game size.

To help stop this happening again make sure you leave doors the way you found them and avoid dropping items all over the place.

 

[bauke67]

That's vey simple actually. I enjoy the game, and it's only frozen like three times.
Which is coniderably better than my laptop, which refuses to run any games made after 2006.
It seriously couldn't even load Portal's main menu.
So the game freezing three times is a vey small prize to pay as opposed to no game at all.

 

[Versuvius]

Never had game issues like this. Except alt tabbing crashing things or the occasional crash, though in NV i got those every 7-8 hours...and i blame the computer background processes. This comp is pretty bloated. XD

 

[imnot]

I to have not had any problems, so They release games like that because they work for most people, and people will buy it.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Happens more with Bethesda games (and Obsidian, by proximity), I notice. Maybe it's an engine issue. Not sure why. It creates all kinds of bugs and issues. Both Fallout 3 and New Vegas would have the issue, where I would have to restart every four hours or so. It got me in the habit of two saves, one always in the world before I entered a building, then one for the inside. Situations where it would freeze up right before the loading screen as I tried to exit buildings set that particular tendency in motion.

Happy to say that Skyrim only crashed once for me, and that was after a 13 hour binge. Maybe it's your console? Is it properly ventilated? Are you working on an old patch update, where the large save file size starts to interfere with things? Are you running low on system memory? That tends to cause some slowdown and freeze ups from time to time.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm currently typing this while I stare at a screenfreeze on my TV.

After battling through a fort siege while the framerate consistently spluttered and wheezed it finally locked up on the last guy. I'd previously quit the game and reloaded because on my way to the siege the game kept stuttering every two or three steps and I hoped that stopping and starting again would remedy the problem. It did not.

Now, if I was playing this on a PC I could turn the specs down and hope it runs smoother, but as a console gamer my only choice is to reset and hope I can get through it without another freeze, just like every other time there is a problem with a console game (which has become far more frequent since developers were given the option to release patches, I notice).

This is the exact experience I've had with every Bethesda game I've played, although I must admit Skyrim has ran considerably better than either of the Fallout games, so I have to ask: How do Bethesda get away with repeatedly releasing these games on consoles when the hardware is barely capable of supporting them?

That's like Ford selling me a car with pedals instead of an engine.

Simple, people pay for them on consoles. As long as people keep paying for the games on consoles, regardless of the quality of the port compared to PC, companies will keep releasing them for that platform and making money.

It's sort of like Bethesda and Obsidian's problem with bugs. People complain, but you'll notice people line up to buy the games immediatly on release despite the glaring problems they are known for instead of taking a "wait and see" approach, and even with the stories about the bugs people keep buying the games. What exactly is their motivation to not release games in this shape and fix it when they get around to it? It's certainly not a demanding customer base because for all the QQing they still get your money, and at this point can be reasonably sure that no matter what you say they will get your money next time they release an open world game.

No offense to Bethesda in paticular, this is more of a criticism of the customer base.

 

[Robert Ewing]

They release it on consoles purely to make the game more accessible and to shift more units.

The PC will always be superior to consoles in terms of technicalities. The Consoles may be superior for a month of two, but after it's release, the PC will catch up, and never stop overtaking.

Console porting is relatively cheap to do. So why not do it? If it sells more units and make valuable millions, why should the developers care about the overall quality of the port? They have your money, and will try to appease the fanbase with a patch or two, but it will never stand up to the system it was made for.

I played battlefield 3 on the PC first and thought it was absolutely beautiful, one of the best looking games I'd ever seen. But when I got it for my ps3. It was absolute garbage. The textures were blurry, a lot of framerate drops, shit looking models, bad audio syncing, and that's not without the absolutely SHIT anti-aliasing on every title the ps3's ever had on it. The 360 was a slight improvement (Which surprised me, as the 360 has less grunt than the 360) but it still couldn't hold a candle to the PC.

Ports TO the PC often aren't any better. But that's more to do with stability issues and shitty coding by lazy developers.

 

[GoaThief]

I get what a lot of you are saying, but don't you think it kind of sucks that we are all resigned to this being the state of the industry now?

No, I disagree with pretty much every point you've made.

Games are more polished now than they've ever been, I can only assume you never experienced the likes of loading a game from a tape for 10 minutes only to have it lock up at the last second... cue rewinding and starting it all over, only for it to happen again. Did people really ***** and moan, like kids do today? Hell no.

The games are ever-more complex and difficult to create, I cannot think of any developers who are truly lazy rather than cash or time strapped. Perhaps if you had first hand experience you might not claim such nonsense.

 

[CarlMin]

While I can really see your frustration, I guess the only way you could get away from these problems is by getting a PC, and even then you'd get a ton of other issues to deal with unless you are ready to spend a lot of money on a powerful rig.

However, all console versions of games that has been optimized for the PC, such as Skyrim and Battlefield, and a whole lot of other games, are gonna have these problems.

 

[SeeIn2D]

Simple answer. Because people want to buy them and play them, and from an economic standpoint, because they bring in a lot more money for the companies that made the game. Just because a console doesn't have the same insane specs as a gaming PC doesn't mean they shouldn't put more intensive games on them. Skyrim is a ridiculously big game and expecting it to not freeze is unrealistic. Don't be a console player pretending to be a stereotypical PC elitist, just don't.

 

[renegade7]

Skyrim would require a pretty high-end (expensive) computer to play. If the released exclusively for PC, they'd be cutting themselves off from a very sizeable player group.

Considering consoles these days are nothing but extremely low end gaming computers...no. Just no.

I could put together a system to run Skyrim on above console level graphics for less than $400.

Even so, exclusively releasing on PC still alienates a lot of potential buyers. Not everyone in the mainstream gaming crowd knows how to build a custom PC (Yes, TES is a very mainstream series). Not to mention expecting someone to drop $400+ for a PC in addition to the game if they already have a console isn't very realistic. Even if all they need is a new graphics card, that would require both knowledge of how to install it (which isn't as common as one would think) and an extra $50+ to spend in addition to the $60 for the game itself.

Additionally, consoles have much more appeal to the mainstream gaming crowd than do PCs.

Not to mention that even though the game is rated M the 14-18 group still has a lot of buying power for games like Skyrim, and having free access to a computer that can handle Skyrim is for that age group more of an exception than a rule (though thankfully that is becoming less so).

I'm not saying the console version is superior, I'm just trying to explain the thinking from a business perspective- it's better to port the game to consoles and put up with bugs than to alienate millions of potential customers.

 

[Best of the 3]

With over 200 hours on my xbox360 over here, I've never had a problem to date. Maybe the smallest of things that I overlook, but no major, game breaking bugs which I've come to expect. I dunno, just luck I guess.

 

[Valdus]

How do Bethesda get away with repeatedly releasing these games on consoles when the hardware is barely capable of supporting them?

That's like Ford selling me a car with pedals instead of an engine.

Because not everyone has a decent gaming PC. Get off your high horse.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Because people lowered their standards to get an experience they normally would not have access to. It's really as simple as that.

Though for the sake of "discussion", I'll add this:

Gamers claim to push past fundamental flaws like game-breaking bugs and glitches if it means they get to play something....and based on my own years of experience with Bethesda fans, as long as those bugs don't happen to them, they're subconsciously convinced they do not exist at all, or exist as a curio item; an exception rather than the norm, even when they occur with alarming frequency.