The fact that developers have to cater to multiple platforms that have hardware limitations and different operating systems has led to worse quality of games of time. Console exclusives are anti-competitive, monopolistic, and they lead to a terrible consumer experience.
This notion that hardware limits hold games back is nonsense and could only come from someone with no development experience. Hardware benchmarks have only benefited the ecosystem of games. Without those benchmarks and the gradual standardization of architecture that the last two gens of consoles have provided the indie market would not be flourishing the way it is. Not to mention it forces AAA titles to actually optimize their shit. Imagine a world where developers had no incentive to care about performance? “tough shit buy a new GPU.” A true gamers paradise.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Water will reach its own level so to speak, if a developer releases a game that is far too much for a majority of gamers to run, those gamers won’t buy the game and it won’t sell. Obviously that also isn’t always necessarily true, but enough terribly optimized games have released recently to be met with 40% rating on Steam that I’d like to think this is the case. Are some developers going to do it anyway? Absolutely, but that’s true regardless. I think that no matter what, indie developers will always tend to keep their games lightweight either by principle or by design necessity, and bigger game studios would also sorta get the message and keep their games reasonable. With obvious exceptions… goddamn 400 GB games these days.
Yeah you’re definitely right that there is still incentive to make games performant and accessible, AND that performance still often gets overlooked at launch and patched up post release (capcom and ubisoft you lil bitches), but I think the hard line of a necessary benchmark for consoles forces optimization to be worked on throughout development and helps indie devs manage their scope from the start as well as level the playing field a bit.
But all of this kind of misses the forest for the trees in that no game is going to be made more fun by loosening hardware restrictions.
The hardware is only a part of it. A keyboard and mouse provide infinite controller configurations. How anyone can play a shooter without them has always puzzled me.
You do realize controller options exist right? (On PCs)
Not to mention it forces AAA titles to actually optimize their shit.
Bless your heart.
Most developers counter that they do console exclusives because there’s too much piracy on the PC gaming market.
No idea if that’s true, or if it even matters.
Personally I think the quality of games has suffered mostly through pressure from investors (and fans) to release them as early as possible, and focus is now overwhelmingly on multiplayer online experiences rather than carefully curated level and mission design.
too much piracy on the PC gaming market.
Nah, it’s not been about piracy for a while, and even when it was about piracy it wasn’t just about piracy. PC development is inherently harder because there isn’s a locked hardware target, so compatibility is difficult and expensive to service. And for a long time, PC sales were just much, much lower than console sales.
Both of those things have changed for a while, partially through the reduction of options in the PC market, partially through PC hardware manufacturers increasingly doing the job of servicing big games with dedicated drivers and partially through Valve becoming a closed, DRM-enabled platform more comparable to a console. You can chart that process, and it’s long, difficult and full of ambiguity.
I have lots of thoughts on “game quality” as well, but it’s hard to know what people even mean with that sometimes (bugs? design? content?). In general games today are… kinda great. Last year in particular was mind blowing. That said, games can get huge, expensive and complicated now in ways they couldn’t really a few decades ago. But it’s also true that games are more varied. Every game in 1994 looked more or less like every other game because the hardware could only do so many things. Today you can play retro 8-bit games AND effectively CG film-quality narrative experiences on the same hardware. It’s crazy how expansive, varied and creative games have become.
Even if one thinks quality has gone down, though, it clearly isn’t because of consoles.
I think there are too many big franchises shaping the market. Some of them steer bad business fixations (see EA riding the licensed sports game MTX horse to hell) and most encourage a lot of me-too design (do we need another battle royale?)
Consoles worsen that with the Gilette model problem. Since most are sold at a loss, the vendor has to make it up on games, and constrain who releases software to those who will pay/revenue share for access. A galaxy of small devs and clever designs won’t even get past the secretary to see the guy who quotes the rate card.
To be fair, a huge appeal of a console for devs was the promise of a uniform experience. Every Xbox Series X Bellgrande With Chives is supposed to be practically equivalent, so you don’t have to worry about someone filing a ticket that the game runs weird when ran on an Athlon 64 FX-60 paired with a pre-production Intel Battlemage card.
Really? Some of the best games out there are (or were for a long time) exclusive to one platform.
I’d much rather have a God of War, or Tears of the Kingdom, or a Half Life Alyx than a sea of endless Assassins Creed or Call of Duty games.
You want to look at who is killing PC games, look no further than Nvidia’s pricing and pushing devs to use RT features their competitors cannot match.
The graphics card has become the single most expensive part in a gaming PC by far, it’s ridiculous. Because of how crazy nvidia has been with their pricing, and AMD being happy to match them in pricing, I’m fine sticking with my eight year old PC. Most games I play are older anyway. I think eventually integrated GPUs will be considered “good enough” that most PCs won’t be using a dedicated graphics card, just like how dedicated sound cards aren’t the norm anymore. The downside would be having to get a new CPU to have a new GPU as well, but with even low-end graphics cards being ridiculously expensive, you’d basically be getting a free CPU upgrade with your GPU upgrade.
Yeah, I’m part of the gang keeping the trusty 1060 in the top GPUs on Steam.
If there was a PS5 priced PC of similar spec I’d be all over it. As it stands I’ll just not upgrade until my current one dies.
Yeah, I know people are on board with the Steam Deck, but it’s an interesting process to see more and more laptops and small PCs targeting that same hardware and the handhelds making it a target that developers want to keep in mind.
I think there’s a future where whatever the baseline integrated GPU for each CPU generation is becomes the new “console target” because that’s where people will be gaming on handhelds and laptops, with dedicated GPUs becoming the old PC market spec for enthusiasts wanting to crank it all up.
I’m not against it, but it’s a lower target than the equivalent same-gen console spec, which is also some APU but without the limitation of having to be working on a battery. In that sense I hope we keep getting console generations to have a decent gradient of handheld battery-powerd APU>console wall plugged APU>dedicated GPU. That seems like a reasonable spectrum.
I prefer platform agnosticism, but this is demonstrably not true.
Consoles are a set hardware target, which has been really helpful for the PC market. Once all consoles landed on a similar architecture (Xbox 360 era and beyond), consoles became very helpful to set a baseline for hardware that then PC can leapfrog over.
Exclusives are a different conversation, and those have pros and cons. It’s increasingly an irrelevant conversation, though, as every platform except for Nintendo becomes increasingly PC-compatible.
Pretty much this. Consoles are incredibly good at establishing a baseline (although Nintendo’s anemic Switch hardware can stay out of the conversation), and giving you a pretty decent idea of the sort of performance you’d see out of a lower-middle tier gaming PC. You can then scale performance from there without running into the “will it run Crysis” issue.
I do agree that EXCLUSIVES shouldn’t really be a thing, but…consoles are not necessarily a bad thing.
console exclusives should be banned
been a pc builder and gamer my whole life, so I agree with your frustration but goddamn this is silly. Banned?
By whom, the world gamedev oversight committee?
The united nations?
LOL
I think it is silly too, but not for your reasoning but, come on bro, it is like if you said let’s go ban selling OS in PCs altogether, you will need to install it yourself, that is the same sentiment for consoles vs PC, people like plug & play devices, and PC sadly are not there yet (some devices like the Steam Deck have a closer approach though).
Why is it the responsibility of, say, Nintendo to make all their games available on all platforms? They make their own hardware and games that are optimized to run on that hardware. Sure, the Switch is inferior to a modern pc in performance and all that but at the end of the day Nintendo chose what their hardware can do and make games accordingly. The fact that most developers and publishers want to release their games on all platforms is not the responsibility of Nintendo. If the most important thing is that every game runs the same on every platform there is no need for hardware like the Switch, which, like it or not, has done something new and interesting. Kinda the same with VR. I personally don’t care for VR but it’s at least something different.
It’s not like if consoles stopped existing then developers would solely target top-end PCs. They will target as large an audience as they can, unless paid to stay exclusive. Most games these days use a pre-made engine that already targets multiple platforms, so it’s not as difficult to port to multiple platforms as before.
This is a great point. If you want to know what the target hardware becomes if you remove consoles from the picture you can go look at the Steam survey. The typical gaming PC is a 6 core Intel machine with a Gforce 3060 and 16 gigs of Ram pushing a 1080p monitor and running Windows 10. And that’s up from the old top GPU, the 1650, which currently sits at number three on the charts.
That, you’ll notice, is worse than the current spec for modern consoles. It’s also why the huge PC hits in history have looked like LoL, World of Warcraft or Minecraft, not like Crysis and Cyberpunk 2077.
Consoles are why you get Alan Wake 2 on PC instead of the Alan Wake model from Fortnite.
How many video games have you paid for in the last 10 years?
Making software more compatible with different platforms is a good thing. Agree about the console exclusives though. I understand that they come with the caveat that the console developer have invested in those games, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to buy the game years later on PC for full price…
Looking at you Final Fantasy 7 remake part 1. 4 years after being released they’re still trying to charge AUD 114.
Console aren’t holding back the industry, they’re just holding back PC gaming.
Consoles are shit. PC gaming is max.
Consoles like the Nintendo switch yes, but exclusives actually help drive competition, as long as they eventually come to other platforms I’m happy
I dislike consoles. I hate the controllers, and I hate being stuck in front of the TV; I’ll play a game on PC or not at all. That being said, the gaming industry is the perfect example of where free-market capitalism should be allowed to take its course. Nobody needs to play games; it’s a luxury and a recreational activity. If a development studio wants to release a game just for one specific console, let them. Maybe it will be a good business decision, and maybe it will fail miserably and cost them millions in lost revenue. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter one way or another. Play a different game.
Upvote because this is unpopular, I disagree but whatever. Im not a pc gamer granted, but i think if there were no consoles and everyone had to be on the pc upgrading pyramid scheme, gaming companies would be hard pressed on how to develop games. There would be a smaller gaming release windows for most people while the ones who could keep up would probably face buggier games since systems are constantly changing.
pc upgrading pyramid scheme,
Lol no. The days of needing to upgrade your PC more than once every 7-10 years have been gone for a while
Once evey 7 or ten years??? Thats like a console lifespan. Im talking about having to stay up to date on latest pc hardware every year or 2.
And I’m specifically saying that is completely unnecessary and has been for years
Well as someone who doesn’t have a gaming pc, that’s how i see things. I could very well be wrong, but im not going to take the opinion of someone who says they dont see how people use a controller.
“As someone without enough knowledge to form a correct opinion, here’s my opinion. No, I will not back down when someone more informed presents new information.”
I agree with them too, upgrading PCs has amounted to a new video card every 4-5 years and a new motherboard/CPU etc every 8-10 years. I’m not one that demands 120fps and 4k and all that though. Video cards are now more expensive but they also don’t need upgraded as often.
Also games are cheaper on PC, with regular free giveaways. And we have a huge library, all the way back to DOS games via DOSBox and console and arcade emulators.
And I play with controller on PC all the time for games like Forza Horizon, Elite Dangerous, and console emulators.
Controllers are nice for certain games. On PCs you at least have options! I just can’t stomach playing shooters on a controller.
