Next-Gen Will Make 'PC Development Much More Attractive'

NowGamer: "Firaxis might not be an obvious choice to ask about next-gen, but considering the PC-focused developer released XCOM: Enemy Unknown on consoles last year it could well be working on a next-gen game too."

[FreakdoutKid]

i hope so bcoz this gen consoles really held pc gaming backwards

[ILive]

It should be an evolution for both. Its a win win.

[Godmars290]

That's because all the major PC devs abandoned the platform out of greed.

[papashango]

It's because of 2007.

Epic and Crytek in particular are the reason the piracy strawman became what it is.

Come to find out here we are 6 years later to find out that games like Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 destroyed console game sales, Arma 2 sold millions, The Indie scene dominates on PC.

Crytek went on sell millions of Crysis 1 copies on pc FUBAR'd Crysis 2 by catering to console and went on to try and repair the bridge they burned with pc gamers with crysis 3.

EPIC stuck to their word about not developing primarily for PC and that piracy killed it. They are stuck with a tired Gears of War franchise and the Unreal engine as their primary income.

But in a nutshell Godmars is right. My comment is just to fill in the blanks as to why

[jeffgoldwin]

@Godmars290

By greed, you mean the desire to make a profit. Obviously all devs are in it to make a profit. You don't really think they are charity organizations do you?

In related news, 100% of people who go to work everyday are greedy. Kinda the whole point of it all is to make money. It's just a nice bonus if you love doing your work too.

[Godmars290]

There's expectant and reasonable greed, like making a profit from selling an apple, and then there's excessive greed, like pricing that apple so as to cover the monthly if not daily costs of running a store.

Some like the confusion of Tomb Raider underselling at over three million is example of that.

[thechosenone]

dude if the money was there, devs would be flocking to the platform but no one wants to code for a system where your games are easily cracked and torrented.

[reynod]

Devs tend to target all platforms, cause thats where the money is.

PC games sell just as well as any other platform. Infact EA said PC was their 2nd most profitable platform just behind the Xbox 360. PS3 was 3rd.

Activision claimed PC was their most profitable platform.

Valve is another dev that probably sells most to PC even putting Steam aside.

So its not like PC isnt profitable, its just that there is more money targeting all platforms. Unfortunately its the PC that is the most powerful platform, hence gets held back the most in multiplatform development. However not all games suffer few of the games that recently used PC hardware and can get quite demanding:

Hitman, Tombraider, Farcry 3, Crysis 3, Sleeping dogs, Maxpayne 3. I think i pretty much mentioned all the best games from the Fall and pretty much all of them take advantage of PC hardware.

[thechosenone]

For one quarter it managed to do better than PS3 and not the entire gen.

http://www.computerandvideo...

"take advantage of PC hardware"

that's a laugh, you need SLI/Crossfire just to run these poorly optimized games... Crysis 3 and FarCry 3 out the gate were a disgrace on the PC.

[reynod]

@thechenone

Thats not the point, My point was PC isnt a platforms for the Devs to ignore. It sells just as good as the consoles. Sure they may exchange places in sales, however bottomline is devs cant afford to ignore any of the platforms.

PC hardware is very scalable. Games run very well on old hardware too and still look good. You dont need crossfire/sli setups to run games, unless you want to be gaming on multiscreens maxed out.

8800GTX which came out 6 years back still manages to run games like tombraider, farcry 3 in 1080p Still a feat consoles cant achieve.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Rather i would say its the consoles that are struggling on these games. With games like Farcry 3, Crysis 3 chugging along at 15-25fps. At least PC gamers have the option to upgrade, console gamers are locked down to ancient hardware.

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

Watch ur mouf....
title: "EA is making more from PC than PS3"
"Xbox 360 led the pack, bringing EA $292 million in the past three months. That compared favorably to the PS3 which did $267 million for the firm. But the PC platform actually managed to outperform Sony's console with $276 million."

come again??

People think ps3 and 360 held there own against pc. But really thy just limit pc to look like console. We have next gen hardware already.

I think this coming gen pc gamers will treated be kings.

Glad BF4 is not leading on ps4 or 720. Thank the heavens..

[supremacy]

thats cool and everything, but that doesnt mean the majority of devs are going to push themselves to push powerful hardware when it costs time and money.

Some will, not all.

[Ulf]

Since when does releasing a console automatically upgrade most PC gamers to that minimum spec?

I'm not seeing how this gen is any different frim the last, in that regard.

[Letros]

Please tell us what the PC minimum spec is.

[papashango]

Here's how the pc gaming industry lets gamers know when its time to upgrade.

http://bf3blog.com/2010/12/...

[AngryEnglish]

Let's see a PC run battlefield 3 with a 500mhz 10mb ati card, 512mb of memory...... You guys are so clueless to how console gaming is optimized.

Minimum spec..... Give your head a shake

[FantasyStar]

It's not like I'm starved for games. I still enjoy games made back in 2007 (Crysis 1, Witcher 1) and it's definitely not like I can't play one game for at least 200 hours and still not enjoy it. Heck: I still play Left 4 Dead 2 to this day because there are so many ways to play it.

Remember back then when we would play the fuck out of FF games? The Speed-runs, the no-upgrade runs, the basic-weapons only runs? People were really creative about their games: now the current-gen kids want everything fed to them.

[Dno]

im 27 so im not a spring chicken. but your an old man aren't you?

Let get this out of the way. no one is being handed anything.

[steve30x]

LMAO You would think with your reply that 2007 was about twenty years ago. I played those games six years ago and Im 39 years old. So I'm not an old man and yes I did disagree with your comment because it was very rude

[FantasyStar]

I'm younger than you(24). I simply think we need to slow down a bit and enjoy the games we have now instead of forcing developers to constantly make new games to the point that the business side of gaming overtakes the creative side of gaming.

[jukins]

pc gaming holds it self back. so tired of hearing otherwise. ITs near impossible for any dev to optimize for the millions of different configurations out there. If anything consoles show PC what can be done with much much less and for a longer period of time.

[FantasyStar]

6 years ago: I would've agreed with this when console games came out with nearly-zero bugs. Now: you'd be challenged to see which version has more bugs in a blind-test.

[jukins]

its true console games have had more bugs this gen with the ability to patch being a crutch for most devs, but better to have than not as far as consoles go. still tho pc gaming will always have more bugs because of the variety of configurations no matter how good the dev is they just cant cover them all.

[PSN-JeRzYzFyNeSt]

i dont care about PC, only for the simcitys, starcraft, age of empires, rollercoaster tycoon, everthing else is console for me.. and for PC yu can just torrent anything

[kingduqc]

Why the pc hate, it's the best platform out there. Flexible, better experience, mods, better looking games, more exclusives.

[Supermax]

It's a win win win pc ps4 next box.

[jeffgoldwin]

I agree. The cost/ease for developing multiplatform games for (sony, ms, and pc) will be far easier then in the past few generations due to similar hardware.

In theory, this frees up resources to do extra things such as improved graphics, story, a.i., less bugs, etc.