Decline Console downgrading

[circ]

So I said something about consoles bringing gaming and quality down the other day and got flak for it. And I got to thinking about it in a little more detail.

So, back in the 80's arcades were huge. You usually got computer or console ports of arcade games, with vastly inferior visuals or audio, though the gameplay was often retained, assuming the game didn't get completely remade in anything but title. Either way, you did not generally see games downgraded in favor of consoles and computers.

But for some reason, these days, it's the opposite. A PC, being the most powerful platform today is the arcade, but consoles decide graphical fidelity, user interface and design choices. Now I thought why that is, and figured the motive is economic in nature, except you can't port a game from one system to the other exactly directly anyway, so quality shouldn't really matter. Sure there are time constraints because you want to ship products as fast as possible to maximize profit, but are we at such a state that you can't afford some extra man-hours to re-design an interface - something a single modder without proper tools can do in a few weeks, or to include proper textures at release?

When did this shift to lazy development begin roughly? PS 1 to use an example, was still inferior in every way design-wize when it came to ports. And yet these days consoles dictate even how an FPS should play.

 

[Severian Silk]

It started about the time Xbox was released. Before that there were not many console games released for PC (though there were some PC games released for consoles such as DOOM, SimCity 2000 and X-COM).

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm surprised you got flak for pointing out the obvious.

The answer is, as can be expected, the bottom line.

Having the PC as the primary development platform of a game comes with two problems: The hardware limits aren't set in stone, and piracy is a major thing. The upside is that you have a more diverse market, your game doesn't have to conform to console standards in any way.

On the consoles you have hardware limits, but piracy isn't such a big issue. Therefore the most sensible approach (from a monetary perspective) to have either the XBone or PS4 as the primary development platform, and then release a PC conversion afterwards if the revenue allows for it, especially if your product has a console demographic.

Which end of the money pool do you want to swim in: The shallow end with all the kiddies, or the deep end where you may end up with less than you started with?

 

[Carrion]

It started about the time Xbox was released. Before that there were not many console games released for PC (though there were some PC games released for consoles such as DOOM, Sim City and X-COM).

Multiplatform games became the norm around the that time, yeah, but PC did get its fair share of console ports even before that, and vice versa. One difference was that the PC and console versions were often quite different from each other, sometimes to a point where they could be barely recognized as the same game. PC games were made with the PC in mind and then perhaps released later on consoles in an inferior state, often with a different UI or a simplified control scheme. Many of the console ports on the PC were godawful as well, of course. After the release of the Xbox, the "AAA PC game" has become all but extinct.

 

[The Decline]

Blame Microsoft and the Xbox.

 

[StrongBelwas]

PC versions of games don't sell as well as the console versions, and the users are more patient for sales, simple as that. PC ports start outselling the console versions consistently, things would suddenly switch around real quickly.

 

[Tribal Sarah]

Maybe things would be different if pc gamers actually supported devs by buying games instead of stealing them or bitching until they're reduced to the cost of cheeseburgers. I remember reading a post on Neogaf, (yes, I know, the orchard of low hanging fruit) where someone was throwing a shit fit because Prison Architect cost $30

 

[Severian Silk]

PC games are more popular now than they were a decade ago because of Steam, Humble Bundle, The Pirate Bay, etc.. The backlog of decent games, wide range of system requirements, and high compatibility on the PC are also a plus. 1337 GAMERZ and Smelly Uncle Chester both get to play their games.

In the future, Microsoft may continue trying to ditch Win32 (or let itself go bankrupt in the process), though.

 

[Metro]

Here's a tip: don't buy consoles.

 

[Telengard]

Ports have always sucked. You can generally tell how much interest a publisher has in a given platform by how much they're willing to spend for the conversion process. Generally, not much at all. Ports generally did hilari-bad sales-wise, too, giving meaning to not spending much money for developing for platforms the game wasn't originally built for.

Until Sony broke the mold with FFVII and Tomb Raider, that is. At last, publishers had reached that magical place where a ported game could sell even better than games made exclusively for the original platform. And when porting to the PC, as long as you didn't care about the 10,000 different config types of the day, and the high expense of working and QAing that bitch, as long as you put in only enough effort to get the game running on some PCs, then you could potentially reap another million (probably only a couple hundred thousand) units of profit at low cost. So, outsource that conversion to some no-name company so your elite crew don't have to spend precious work hours on the low-performance sector that is the PC, and get some more money. And if the new custom doesn't appreciate your low-quality efforts, its not like that audience was your core audience anyways. They're just a cheap source of extra funds. So, yes, the answer is economic. Cheap conversion for extra profit taken from the suckers who don't know any better. Three-four years after those two big games came out, and all the companies had their brand spanking new console division, which is the exact length of time it takes for a large company to change directions.

As for larger trends, the PC gaming industry was due for a major halt regardless of consoles. Previous to the late 90s, games companies were all about finding out what kind of hardware was out there (the install base), and building for that. Late 90s, early 00s, and a philosophy of build-to-it-and-they-will-come took over. Except, they didn't come. And the saying became - build to it, and they might come, if they really, really like you...maybe. After a couple of high profile flops that staggered to a success years after their debut (which is long after investors want their returns), the trend came to its bitter end, and that was before the 08 economic collapse and people stopped buying new computers like at all. That collapse is one of the reasons the last console generation was so long, too, as no one wanted to release something so expensive as a console into a dead sales year.