Why are PC gamers shafted by release dates?

[Dyan]

This has been something that has always been a pain in the ass for me. A lot of times it seems that publishers will realease the game for consoles, but then make PC gamers wait for a month or sometimes even more. The most recent example for me is Assassin's Creed III. The release date for consoles is the 30th of October (31st if you're in Europe), but for the PC it's November 20 (23rd if you're in Europe). Seriously.

 

[Karoshi]

Because they are developping primarily for consoles, on account of PC gaming being "dead" and "unprofitable".

So yeah, it sucks. Nothing one can do, though.

 

[Vegosiux]

Because they are developping primarily for consoles, on account of PC gaming being "dead" and "unprofitable".

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, of course it's less profitable if your customers don't have to buy the platform to use your product for you as well as the games.

But it's okay, with so many releases being pumped out, most of them are likely to be shit anyway, and those that aren't, I can pick and choose and take my sweet time with htem.

 

[Martin Agnas]

its Ubisoft we all know what they think of PC gamers.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114367-Ubisoft-Kills-Ghost-Recon-Future-Soldier-on-PC

Dont waste your money.

 

[Pebkio]

What they said, it's sad that most PC games are just ports from simple consoles. And sometimes lazy ports too...

Skyrim didn't originally come with the ability to use more than 2gb of ram... for shame.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

I think it depends on the game.

Sometimes, you get PC releases a little bit later because some developers (I recall reading somewhere that Capcom is one) don't start on the PC version of their game de jour until the console version is finished. This would create delays, obviously. Primary reason for this one would be, yeah, console gaming has (I think) the larger audience, so they're going to pander to that crowd first.

With some games, the port is later because of something being added to it rather last minute. Arkham Asylum, for example, was later because the devs added PhysX to the PC version, which bumped the shipping time a little bit.

Other times, (and I'm just speculating on this one), you have to make sure the game runs properly at the minimum spec, the recommended spec, and anything in between. There are a lot of potential hardware variations to PC gaming rigs, and you have to make sure that nowhere along the line does your game conflict with these. (Like I said, I may be talking out of my ass as far as that one goes; just a speculation). You couple that with starting on the PC version later, or choosing to add something that you weren't going to initially, and, yeah, you'd get a later release date.

But, like everything else in life, what it comes down to is money. [A lot of] publishers and developers see the console market as being the better money-making market, so that's going to be their focus. It sucks if you're primarily a PC gamer, having to wait that indeterminate amount of extra time for the game to be released on your platform of choice, but I don't think much is going to change anytime soon.

 

[Yopaz]

its Ubisoft we all know what they think of PC gamers.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114367-Ubisoft-Kills-Ghost-Recon-Future-Soldier-on-PC

Dont waste your money.

If only. Ubisoft is not the only company doing this.

Rockstar or Capcom also do this a lot. GTA V was released 9 months later on PC and Resident Evil 5 9 months later.

OT: Games are made primarily for consoles, that's why PC get poor ports and bad optimization.

 

[MrPeanut]

its Ubisoft we all know what they think of PC gamers.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114367-Ubisoft-Kills-Ghost-Recon-Future-Soldier-on-PC

Dont waste your money.

If only. Ubisoft is not the only company doing this.

Rockstar or Capcom also do this a lot. GTA V was released 9 months later on PC and Resident Evil 5 9 months later.

OT: Games are made primarily for consoles, that's why PC get poor ports and bad optimization.

Not to mention that the GTA port was inexcusably bad.

But now rockstar seems to have taken the stance "lets no even bother with pc games"

 

[Yopaz]

its Ubisoft we all know what they think of PC gamers.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114367-Ubisoft-Kills-Ghost-Recon-Future-Soldier-on-PC

Dont waste your money.

If only. Ubisoft is not the only company doing this.

Rockstar or Capcom also do this a lot. GTA V was released 9 months later on PC and Resident Evil 5 9 months later.

OT: Games are made primarily for consoles, that's why PC get poor ports and bad optimization.

Not to mention that the GTA port was inexcusably bad.

But now rockstar seems to have taken the stance "lets no even bother with pc games"

I wouldn't know about that. I've only played it for 3 hours because of how much I disliked almost everything about it. However some of the issues I have with it might be related to poor porting...

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I agree with most of the responses here, but I always thought one issue was paramount to the publishers. We hear from them that they're mainly focused on the sales between the first week-first month for some reason, maybe that's what shareholders are looking at.

We also hear that PC gaming is barely worth it because of rampant piracy, with Ubisoft claiming numbers of 90% pirated or some mess. That said, it seems to me that for those first handful of months that publishers declare a game dead or alive with are given to the console for its larger audience and tougher piracy, then when that window is closed they'll use the time that's passed to add PhysX, DirectX11 and Tesselation, AA support, SSAO etc. Maybe it's "because they want to be nice" but I'm sure it wouldn't be worth the trouble to port a game if it wasn't actually profitable or if 90% of the copies were actually pirated *shrug*.

 

[kasperbbs]

I'm pretty sure that i have nothing else to add to the 'why?'.

I don't really mind the delays anymore, the last one that really bothered me was gta 4, because that was my favorite franchise at the time. These days i'm just glad that games get ported to PC at all. I just wish that dev's wouldn't ***** and moan about the low sales when their game has already been out for almost a year on other platforms and most people who wanted to play it already did.

 

[shrekfan246]

its Ubisoft we all know what they think of PC gamers.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114367-Ubisoft-Kills-Ghost-Recon-Future-Soldier-on-PC

Dont waste your money.

If only. Ubisoft is not the only company doing this.

Rockstar or Capcom also do this a lot. GTA V was released 9 months later on PC and Resident Evil 5 9 months later.

OT: Games are made primarily for consoles, that's why PC get poor ports and bad optimization.

GTA V? Wow, time travel is invented in the next two years? That's good to know.

OT: I knew this would be about Assassin's Creed III. I'd say you should be expecting this considering all of the other AssCreed games didn't reach the PC until almost a full year after their console counterparts, I'm just glad they've managed to bring the time down to one month now.

Besides, it's not every game that is released a month or longer after the console release. The only ones I can really name from this year that aren't indie titles are... well, Assassin's Creed. Arkham City was last year, and Dark Souls wasn't released until this year but that's because they didn't even have a PC version to begin with.

EDIT: Oh, wait, Prototype 2, but the developers of that one got shut down before the PC version was even released. Which, of course, left it with game-breaking bugs that will now never be fixed... good job, Activision.

 

[ASnogarD]

Theres a number of reasons , none of them PC gamer friendly...

MS and Sony dont want the added competition of the PC, its often stated a PC version will be better (if only for higher resolutions and FPS)... and as the PC has no 'owner' to fight for its causes, a little money to have that competition go away is pretty obvious.

Players will also pick up a PC version later after buying the console version, especially if it was a good game and the player wants to get the best out of the game... like Skyrim, its not even debatable that the PC version is miles ahead of the consoles.

Delaying a release to improve it is bullshit, nothing less... an escuse (at least the publisher had the decency to see the need to provide an escuse, these days its delayed ... deal with it or piss off).
Why is it BS ? Well basically the game is coded on a PC, the 360 version is virtually identical to the PC version just uses lesser settings... to improve a 360 version of a game the devs merely use textures that are closer to the art assets the artist originally use before compression and dropping of quality to fit it in the engine.
The hardware variation of the clients is already dealt with in the API's used, the hardware manufacturers have the responsibility to ensure there hardware works on the common API's.

Ubisofts reasoning is that PC titles get pirated so badly that it would effect the console sale of that title, conviniantly forgeting that the 360 is also prone to piracy... but Ubi wouldnt dare alienate that market, but as the PC is percieved to be a tiny niche market no big loss... or so they think.

In the end the biggest reason is that MS and Sony make money from royalties of titles that are running on there consoles, and neither make money from royalties on the PC.
MS is actively sabotaging the PC as a top level gaming platform in hopes of making it a apple store like device, a oversized tablet.

 

[Frankster]

I always thought a large part of it was due to piracy, that releasing a game on pc means easy cracks made within 24 hours and tons of people playing it for free.
Pirating on a console, though possible from what i hear, would be outside the technical abilities of most console users, so you can be sure a higher % of them will buy the game.
Those that really want to play your game and would have been tempted to pirate, must go through consoles first or pass a waiting period.

Another element i see would be big companies trying to make their exclusive consoles as attractive as possible, so would pull strings to make their game ps3/xbox exclusive for a month or so.

 

[TrevHead]

Console is the bigger market so they have priority, anybody who has a console and loves Japanese games but lives outside North America will know what a pain it is waiting for game to be localised for their region.

Playtesting and compatibility issues aside, it makes good business sense for publishers to delay PC games, Boxed PC games are generally much cheaper to buy and quickly drop in price and even then you have piracy, and MS and Sony doing exclusivity deals.

Also with later PC ports you have double dippers, both for the PC enhancements and for online co-op and it is a good way of marketing digital games, since ppl who missed the game first time around might buy it for either platform.

PC gamers love to champion digital games that XBLA gamers ignored.