PC gamers....why must we always get shafted?

[GoaThief]

That's a lie. There's no way on your life you have anti-aliasing running to any large degree with artifacts you can see from a mile away.

If I fraps it will you call me a liar again or will you apologise? More likely you'll just ignore it and not reply as evidenced in previous threads.

One thing I am not, little girl, is a liar. How about you prove I'm one before throwing around heafty accusations? Why haven't you provided your own evidence that supports your argument? I think the evidence on who's the bullshitter speaks for itself so far, don't you?

 

[shrekfan246]

2. I dont know the situation with the dark souls port but theres a difference between "like the console" and "broken"

It's only 'broken' if you're refusing to use a gamepad. I haven't actually bothered with the K+M controls because I was aware of the issues with the keybindings and in-game button prompts, but the game itself plays absolutely fine, I'm 30 hours in at Soul Level 72. And in fact, it crashes less often than purported 'better' ports tend to. The little DSFix mod removes the resolution lock and is getting updated with various other little things practically every week.

Personally, I don't really think PC gamers are getting shafted very often right now. I haven't seen a port that was truly so terrible as to be completely unplayable, at least from the more high-profile games, and there's still tons of indie games/PC-specific genres/cross-platform games that are just better on the PC. I can't stand going back to Batman: Arkham City on my PS3 after playing it on my PC in all of its 60 FPS glory. It just looks and feels so slow and choppy.

 

[Puzzlenaut]

Console gamers don't get mods or many other things, and for the most part (or at least no way near as vocally) they don't complain, whereas PC gamers seem to want to have their cake and eat it.

Really? I must be hanging out in the wrong circles of the internet.

Gamers *****, Gamers whine, Gamers complain. It's what we do, if we're not playing games were complaining about something. It's not 1 or 2 sub-genres that complain or complain more than others, it's everyone and we all whine equally, It's just that we don't seem to notice when we're the ones bitching

Oh, don't get me wrong, console gamers ***** as incessantly as all gamers do, but they don't tend to ***** about not having the things that PC gamers do, such as mods and lower prices and a whole host of other things, whilst PC gamers, as a generalisation, are constantly moaning about things consoles get that we don't.
The view of the OP, that PC gamers "always get shafted", is as typical of our community as it is untrue.

 

[GoaThief]

That's due to a lack of AF and AA sampling the images further.

16x and AAA, as you can see.

What, you were expecting 32x which isn't even available in the options? Come on. Answer my questions and provide some of your own evidence.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I don't feel shafted. We practically have entire exclusive genres, we get to play just about every game with higher frame-rates, in higher resolutions with (albeit, often marginally) better graphics and it is far easier for us to play classic retro games than it is for any other format. A couple of years ago we were kind of being shafted, but a lot of publishers seem like they're trying to apologize for that now. The whole "PC gaming is dying" thing has more or less completely stopped recently, too.

There are issues with the format, such as DRM and the lack of Red Dead Redemption. But most ports work perfectly fine, if games are delayed it's not for very long and they normally come with extra PC-centric goodies. I think we got it pretty good, myself.

 

[GoaThief]

/snip

Yeah, I agree it totally is off-topic and now largely irrelevant - hehe. Aren't you talking about paged memory though? I may be wrong but the following link also seems to think the working set in WTM relates to physical memory too? Perhaps we should take it to PM or start a new thread, it's interesting all the same.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1170654/how-to-interpret-windows-task-manager

 

[talker]

after reading everybody's post i still think developers hate pc gamers. i mean, lots an' lots an' lots an' lots of stuff like dlc, mods, games etc. are realeased on god**** xbox first or something.

sorry for the swearing but i hate waiting.

i really do

 

[Mirroga]

I don't know exactly why PC get shafted. But if I'm going for an unserious response, it might be because PC has enough advantage due to the versatility in hardware, ease of patches and DLCs, and the power of mods.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

PC gaming's not getting any shaft. It's just not where the money is anymore.

If you play on PC, most publishers have no choice but to directly assume you're a potential pirate. They don't have to make that assumption on consoles because of the way pirating games is much more complex for that platform. Not all DRM is horribly intrusive, either. People are freely using Steam and not complaining about it, after all.

Exclusives will always happen. There'd probably be huge wads of cash to be made if Naughty Dog ported any of the three Uncharteds to PC. Will that ever happen, however? No. Not because they don't recognize the platform's potential, but because Sony doesn't want to lose one of the few flagship franchises it has. It's seriously best to just accept it. We're lucky enough to have gotten a shitty Mass Effect 1 PC port that was only grudgingly backed by EA and shunted off towards a third-rate developer (Demiurge).

Then there's hardware considerations. New chipsets come out almost every month. The bleeding edge changes week after week. This makes the task of ensuring compatibility a sheer nightmare for most game devs. What's the easy way out if you're dead-set on making a triple-A game? Consoles.

Consoles give you one rig, one setup, and that setup is guaranteed to last five years at a minimum. The only changes to expect would be firmware updates. PC? Oh, all bets are off. A customer might buy your game and get it to run without a hitch on their rig, and then decide to change their graphics card. Will that same game still cooperate? Not necessarily. Usually it will, yes - but there's still an off chance of something going wrong.

Not to mention that the graphics market being precisely that, some constructors can approach studios and offer pretty lucrative deals. We're lucky, in that most of the time, chipset makers don't do more than require the usual "The Way it's Meant to be Played" logo. There's always the off chance of a game being made entirely incompatible with the competitor's chips, though.

Remember Dreamfall? ATI or bust. Nvidia's for rubes, yo.

So we're not getting the shaft, we're simply offering an easily ignored market for publishers and manufacturers who want to line their pockets quickly and easily. The PC doesn't offer the same opportunities it used to, considering that.

On the flipside, the PC is where games are born, no matter their platform of origin. We'll always have the indie scene, and some developers like Valve have made it quite clear that they're in it for the PC's continued existence and profitability.

So the solution to the OP's problem is simple. Either turn into a scurvy dog, or stop bemoaning the lack of release of the occasional exclusive. They're profit deals, not cases of some Snidely Whiplash-ish business exec deciding that tormenting the keyboard-mashers will be fun for the afternoon.

Besides, things change. The PC as we know it will not always exist, nor will consoles as we know them. Even if PCs had to fall utterly by the wayside, we'd see the birth of something else.

For everything, there is a season.

 

[Schtoobs]

I get where you're coming from. We have steam which I know doesn't help those with poor connections but at least they're appear to be trying to keep their customers happy. Personally I think PC users have it better than console users. That is ultimately why I chose PC gaming.

For the record, I think F2P games are a great option, yeah it's a bit of a grind to unlock the next zone, but it's free. I played Lotro and didn't pay a penny, I got bored of it eventually, but IT WAS FREE. I'm sure there are some F2P games that are abit underhanded about trying to get your money but I didn't experience it in Lotro. It said it was free to play, I played it for free. Only someone with very little grasp of the cost involved to make and maintain a game like that would have problems with the F2P model.

There are indie games that are free and don't hold ransom any part of their game. But they don't have the polish or depth available in most F2P games.

Arguing about the semantics of the title "F2P" just means that you misunderstood the model. So now you know don't argue that it should be the same as your mistaken idea of what it was. That's on you. Everyone I know got what it means.

 

[Arif_Sohaib]

The last few years, it did seem like publishers preferred not to release games for PC and when they did, they didn't put effort into it and they did come bundled with a lot of problems but the WiiU is launching soon and Microsoft and Sony's answer can't be too far ahead so I am guessing that a lot of developers will be doing stuff to get PC gamers' loyalty like they did in 2006-2008( FEAR, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, the last good Command and Conquer,Age of Empires 3, Crysis).
You can already see it. Look at Max Payne 3 on the PC, lots of graphics options and it is highly optimized and better videos for the PC to the point that the game is 20+ GB and this is despite Red Dead Redemption not being on the PC and the GTA4 port being very terribly optimized on PC. Sleeping Dogs has a hi-res texture pack for PC. And Ubisoft, after years of badmouthing PC gamers, is finally trying to gain their loyalty. They released I am Alive and are removing the always online DRM. Lords of Shadow 2 is coming on the PC from a publisher that rarely releases games for PC and Dark Souls was the first attempt by a developer that never made games for the PC.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Ooooh a vault thread about pc and consoles. Gotta post in this.

piracy, ease of developement, lower expectations, ease of marketing

An oversimplification, but that's pretty much it, and all one needs from a public forum.

The current console generation started at exactly the right time, and it basically bloomed* out of control, leaving PC in the dust.

There are other factors involving proprietization, convenience, and market control that contributed heavily to this, but the biggest factor was that once the ball started rolling for consoles (in lieu of PC) their popularity alone carried them.

Did PC suffer for it? Yes. In terms of development, it stagnated and started to die while the rest of the market grew. Only now, when the current consoles are so completely obsolete, are they getting games that aren't just ports.

Primarily due to how uncertain the future console business looks.

Dont quote me on that.

Try and stop me.

I love it whenever someone uses that picture as a pithy counter-argument, because it's hilariously misleading. As a bonus, it primarily ignores the points of this topic entirely.

If someone made a comparative picture showing native console games made in the last 6 years (just the well-known "blockbusters"), using the same ratio, it would utterly dwarf the "PC isn't dying" pic by now.

 

[Entitled]

So you, Average Gamer, look through one of those " reasons why it's worth to be a PC gamer [http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/2012-2/]" lists, and you only see obscure exclusives that are "unimportant", while all the "important" titles, your GoW, AssCreed, CoD, GTA, Mass Effect, Crysis, all being either console exclusives or treating console as their primary system, while for most PC gamers, the PC exclusives are simply more interesting.

I'd hardly call Mass Effect a console exclusive, mabye it was primarily for the Xbox but there are big differences between the console and PC version...mainly in the interface..because Bioware at least made half an effort with the PC version being a PC developer originally

anyway even if that is the came (games deveoped with consoles in mind first and foremost) if they arent god awful ports then they are still better to play on PC if thats your preference, just look at skyrim

The Mass Effect trilogy is not the most extreme example of it, it wasn't exactly hated for it, but it still hase a very console-y feel, compared to the earlier Bioware PC games.

I guess you could call it coincidential, saying that what I describing as "console-y" is simply "casualness", or "dumbng down" RPG mechanics, but even if it not a cause and effect conection, there is a connection.

Consoles are inherently more mainstream in many senses: The unified system specs, the simple controllers, the couches and TV screens, the closed OS not allowing for any modified content, all provide both sides of the same coin: Accessibility, and simplification.

Even if occasionally there are games like the three Blizzard franchises, or the Total War games, that still ended up growing to be huge on the PC alone, and there are some obscure niche games in console digital stores, as a rule of thumb, if a developer wants to be more successful, sooner or later they will probably end up focusing on consoles.

It's a bit like the idea of "selling out" in music. If you liked an obscure subgenre band's tune, and they are becoming more and more pop, then you will often find a signing with a major label as the obvious watershed moment.

Likewise, every time a developer says that they are removing features for accessibility, remove levelling from an RPG, make a tactical shooter less tactical, etc, then very often, the consoles will be the answer to many of their problems.

Some companies will continue making decent PC ports even after that, but it's a matter of personal sentiment. Financially, they are no longer relying on the elite that cares about those features, so they might as well abandon them, along with modding support, graphical tuning, mouse and keyboard support, etc.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's just a picture I thought might add something to my post. The main point I made is above it. But so it's not just misleading, it's hilariously misleading? You get joy out of people being wrong?

No, I'll be more explicit this time.
That picture is overused, and it is used almost exclusively in defense of PC gaming, where it is almost entirely useless.

How could your picture NOT dwarf this picture? It's from freaking 2004 or something. I'm pretty sure the ratio of games is about the same between consoles and pc. And even if they aren't it in no way means pc gamers are getting shafted.

They aren't getting "shafted".
It's more accurate to say that the PC platform was, by proportions, neglected compared to console gaming.

The Publishers got in bed with proprietary control (which is the true long-term strength of a console from a business point of view), and it made them a mint. Rather consistently at that.

Why develop for the comparatively more complicated PC market when consoles just do it better?
As a point of business logic, this basically went uncontested everywhere save for the MMO market until only a couple of years ago (and even there, WoW was the only true roaring success until the F2P games started slowwwly rising).

People point to individual games like WoW, The Witcher, LoL, etc as proof of how PC gaming is thriving (as most people do when they post that silly picture), but what they fail to realize is WHY those games succeed: They fill in a void that developers and AAA publishers left in the PC gaming market.

(Incidentally, that same void is presently being filled by a lot of Independent Developers. This is not a coincidence or luck.)