Why do people say PC is "held back" by consoles?

this gen it wont be that long, i mean PS2/3 was ultra suberb when they were released, PS4/Xbone is slightly above average pcs of today. Actually they cant even play their games on 1080p which is standart on pcs nowadays. I bet devs wont optimise their games to make consoles look better for this year and maybe the next

@humanistpotato:

I agree that console generations should last 5 or 6 years at most. Last gen was too looong!

That said, your post is not entirely true. Out from close to 100 PS4 games, out now, only 3 do not run at native 1080p. Actually most games run at 1080p60, especially lately.

It was too long. THat is what I thought too, but I figured that length would factor into the spec of both next gen consoles. I find myself on wiiu more than ps4. Visually I don't care--I'm really yet to be wowed by a ps4 game. In fact Wiiu has better looking games imo.

Because they don't want to look at the fact that the money comes more from console gaming than pc gaming.

Gotta love cluless console gamers. i know console gamers are that stupid. you mean money come from casual non gamers so they buy cinemtaic QTE fest?

PC is where all real games are. Console has dumbed down so many classic franchises in our lifetime. go back to cinematic games like uncharted or Girly pink JRPG like final fantasy. PC gaming is for men with big muscles.

Man you have no idea what you're talking about lol. Gameplay a la game design aspects hasn't improved beyond PS2 era video games; the digital test of your abilities has been reached (as far as this control type goes), so there's no way designing games "with a controller in mind" holds back games that can be played on both PC and consoles.

Can't agree. Games designed for pc don't work on consoles, simple as that. It is why series' like Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six were so dumbed down. With the improved tech one can only imagine what could be possible on pc.

So what is exactly it that "holds back" game design then? More buttons? Because, you know, you can sell a designated controller for a game. Consoles don't "hold back" arcade game designs simply because they use controllers, and the era when console ports of arcades were nerfed predated the PS2 era.

@SolidGame_basic:

The entire point of a console is to create a static long term platform with a large install base so that a developer can start work on a game and trust that in two to five years there will still be a sizable install base who view the hardware as "top of the line" and so forth.

When the PS3 and 360 came out, they set the standard for video games in stone, and collected an install base of well over a hundred million. If a publisher made a game that couldn't run on either console because it required more advanced hardware then either console had, they would literally be turning their backs on a hundred plus million customers. As time went on, neither console improved hardware while chip, ram, and GPU technology continued to advance without them. As game publishers interested in selling their product to a massive audience would be insane to abandon those a hundred million plus people who used incredibly obsolete hardware to play games, this stopped games from advancing beyond the lessor of the two consoles.

This is great for the average customer, as they do not have to continue to rebuy top of the line technology every six months in order to keep on gaming. It does however have the side effect of restraining innovation. Saying consoles hold games back isn't an insult, just a fact of prioritizing low cost over performance the way economy class card prioritize full efficiency over horse power and luxury. Consoles primary function is to limit the minimum requirements for games for solid chunks of an entire decade. This keeps prices low, which is awesome for everyone who makes less then fifty grand a year or those who have kids. It however also ensures that the maximum fidelity of games is limited by the least powerful system embraced by the masses.

If there were no consoles, the line would be: "People with crap PCs hold power users back." That is after all what the PS3 and 360 are. They are extremely crappy PCs by modern standards, and the user base of either console still dwarfs those who own a PS4 or XB1 by an order of magnitude.

Arcades are simple in nature. Releasing a designated controller is of course a possibility but it is risky for the publisher/developer. It is why it doesn't happen often. Look at Kinect. Nobody wanted that. You know what Microsoft should have done? Bundled in a mouse and keyboard with every xboxone. That should have been their surprise with the week after release date of the ps4.

No, arcades aren't "simple[r]" than other games. Let me clarify why I brought up arcades: there's nothing about a console nowadays that makes them unable to play Tekken Tag 2, an arcade game.

Who cares about how "risky" it is. Games designed around control types can be released with said control type. There's nothing "holding [the game] back" about the use of a controller.

There in fact could be mouse and keyboard controls on console; that doesn't make it 'superior' at all. I'm not sure you're getting the point.

If anything, consoles are held back by PC.

@princessgomez92: nothing holds back game design on any platform.

Btw i especially targeted the controller bs because i use arcade controls.

Certain games just can't be played effectively with a controller. When one of those makes its way from PC to console the result is usually a stripped experience. It happens all the time. I even provided you with examples. The fact that you say I don't know what I'm talking about shows how little you know about what you're talking.

kind of wondered why pc developers dont go ahead and develop a pc exclusive showing off how good the pc hardware is. just saying

because it's easier to just develop benchmarking demos?

oddly enough console games are made on PCs so they are formatted for inferior hardware to begin with then ported over to PC and play like dog crap

unless some devs like rockstar/bungie actually do some non-sloppy porting on GTA V and Destiny

just look at CoD, it started getting terrible after cod4 was released because they started focusing heavily on consoles

Well with how weak consoles are this gen the standard "new" PC for gaming is already better.

A low end card like the 750ti can perform better than the PS4.

And the newer cards are coming out at the end of the year and beginning of next year.

So soon even the weakest dedicated video cards will be better than the PS4.

Thats why pc games have scalable settings....but lately maybe the past 3 or 4 years there is a very very small difference between Low and High settings on big time pc games thanks to consoles being lowest common denominator. It's like consoles = low-mid settings and for the hardcore pc guys you max it and its only marginally better. We need a new dev like Crytek (pre Crysis2) to come around and raise the bar with an exclusive to see what a real high end system is capable. It would be nearing real life levels.

The core gaming market for pc isn't big enough. Dev budgets are too big now so the only route is kickstarter. Isn't Star Citizen supposed to be showing of the pc's full power?

Because PC's have ever evolving specs. Consoles have static specs, and console generations last for many years. Developers have to cut more corners because they have to keep in mind they will have to run well on consoles as well.

Only reason it really pissed me off, was that i build a beefy gaming PC in 2010, with i7 950, 12 gigs of ram and a GTX 580 which was the current high end Nvidia card. The graphics card were totally overkill for the current games that were being released. It was in the middle of the PS3/360 gen. Running ultra settings is nice, but the games could have looked so much better.

The thing is that it's no longer the 90s, or early 00's, where the newest games required a beefy PC. Games cost so much to develop these days, that the publishers want maximum profit, and that does not mean optimizing a game for that small percentage of gamers that have some über rig. Sadly :P

IN 2004 consoles had halo2 pc had doom 3, far cry, hl2.

In 2007 pc had crysis NOTHING on x360/ps3 reached crysis or its interactivity with the enviroment.

I dont know wtf it is but consoles have lower standarsd. Since psx, console sequels were recycled trash eg the syphon filter series. Pc has innovation, interactivity, the sequels are leaps forward using the latest technologies.

Once the developer goes to cosnoles their games become lazy, simpistic and just poor. Like consolites have lower standards.

Hell there arent rpgs on consoles, just action games with upgrades and dialogue options.

So i look at the order and i laugh, BARELLY 30 fps interactive movie, doors open and close automaticly, scripted to hell, etc etc. Back in 2004 when hl2 came out i thought games will take place in cities in the future like gta and you will be able to destroy stuff and move objects etc etc. Games ended up becoming more linear than cod. Its pahetic.

PC is held back by parities.

Just look at all the new tech they are using on consoles right now that could have been possible in 2010.

Yes and thats exactly why consoles are so good at making everything.

Stealth games, gone, horror games gone, tactical games gone, solid singleplayer games gone.

SO consoles make so much money yet there is no innovation, all console games are doing is copy each other by providing linear scritped to hell cod ripoffs or mp cod ripoffs. such innovation in the industy.

2007, crysis looks and has more techinical advancements than any game on ps3/x360. So i guess they are lazy or the hardware just doesnt let them do much.

.....????

?????

How by used "next gen" consoles that have 4 year old pc hardware in them?

Sure give someone 50-100 million.

What? nod a cod ripoff? Then why would anyone invest so much money on anything?

rekt

PS4 is stronger than 99.9% of PCs

This could actually be true. It would explain why the Sims 4 has such low reqs and the most popular pc fps has 1998 graphics.

Never knew all PCs were meant to be used for gaming.

BREAKING NEWS

Yet Uncharted4 will sell better than any PC exlcusive.

@Jankarcop: do you even have a PS4?

Trying too hard

WoW is still more played than UC2 sold,kinda sad for a 10 years old game :(

What makes you think that if PS4/X1 had x2 better hardware specifications developers wouldnt take advantage of every single % of their power ? Ofc they would. So much PC power goes wasted all these years because of X360/PS3 and now PS4/X1 are already way behind on their release.. Come on.

He never showed his "gaming PC", what makes you think he'll show that "PS4" he has.

I guess the argument would go something like this:

• There is a rough standard for the current hardware limitations (e.g majority of people own machines with x capability)
• Consoles are static, their hardware doesn't change.
• A console generation can last a long time (e.g last gen lasted around 7 years, and is still going)
• A large percentage of gaming machines is made up of consoles, thus the rough standard is dictated by the current generation of consoles
• If consoles didn't exist, the rough standard would be moving at a faster pace (rather than sitting there for 7 years).
• PC's have graphics settings, so while developers can target better machines, they can allow for lower settings, allowing the majority of gamers to still play
• In a console-less world, hardware would advance much faster, and due to graphics settings, everyone is still accommodated for. Through time and demand, better hardware would have a consumer friendly price tag at a faster rate. So we would see better technology at a faster rate at the consumer level.

Something like that anyway. So no, PC's don't hold back PC's the same way consoles hold back PC's back.

That has nothing to do with game design or the console. You didn't provide any examples where game design was limited by a console or a PC; you only cited controllers, indicating that you really don't know what you're talking about. Do you think people make arguments for how PC versions of games like Devil May Cry 3 are held back because they are designed with controllers in mind?

The point is that control scheme has nothing to do with the capabilities of the machine it's played on, and the maximum digital test via controls like this has literally been reached on every machine, making it so that it is impossible for the console to be holding back actual game design on PC.

Why do I even post here?

Thats due to the developers being greedy and only caring about sales instead of making a great game, ie: Crysis to Crysis 2 and 3. Game quality and overall technological advancement suffered as the series progressed because they wanted to make a multiplat. Like Crysis selling what over 3 million wasnt enough?

Ugh.. you're hopeless. who would want to play DMC without a controller?

You see, when a game is in the planning phase, decisions get made about its design. Decisions like how the user will interact with the UI. My point is: clunky controller interfaces suck.

...and stop talking about digital tests. It means nothing.

What's actually hopeless is the argument you can't defend.

A video game digitally tests your abilities - literally. Don't pretend like you don't know what I mean.

"Clunky controller interfaces suck..." that's up to the developer to design correctly. It still does not have to do with the console it is being developed for.

No. console is runing gaming

and i hate when casuals diluting my hobby. console have ruined so many great franchise

stealth games are no longer exist thanks console

FPS genere was invade by Halo and screwed up by COD4

RPG got screwed sideways cant console go back to JRPGs?

Consolization is crime againts humanity

lol someone trying to be SNIPER

Assumptions are not facts....

Yet when it does happen, look at the results -

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

You dont answer though ...

I repeat ! If PS4/X1 had x2 better hardware ( more memory , better CPUs , better GPUs ) wouldnt developers take advantage of all this power ? Ofc they would. Period. Thats not an assumption , thats a fact.

PC does hold back PC. If Crysis had sold 5 million copies at full price then maybe the franchise would have remained pc only and then other devs would have followed with their own pc only graphical powerhouses.

Game development is too expensive now to be pc only.

Having the hardware to play every pc game at or near release from from the 90's to 2007 was simply too expensive for most people.

If consoles didn't exist then console only gamers would either quit gaming or buy cheap pc's. They certainly wouldn't become a part of the enthusiast crowd that upgrades every 2 years.

This isn't an argument. You're just sort of typing at me. I'm telling you controller interfaces left over in PC ports are often sluggish. This is a true thing that happens.

This is before we even get to the argument about how dumbed-down games can be. The risk of awesome strategy game franchises getting ruined by publishers who think we want less-complicated, action games is real. There are some games you just can't play well with a controller (this is a true fact and you know it). So when a publisher forces a game to go from PC to all platforms, certain compromises have to be made. Dragon Age is a perfect for gameplay. Skyrim is a perfect example for interface.

A test of skill doesn't have anything to do with this. These are design decisions based on primary hardware and assumptions about the target consumer. This is a lowest common denominator industry. So who is really holding back gaming? Casual gamers; and what do they mostly use for 'gaming'? Consoles. Don't get me wrong, consoles are great and gaming certainly owes something to them. It's the industry that's at fault here.

Preemptive Damage Control is my guess.

I like your posts. It always always involves Jrpg, you could even be talking about quantum physics then abruptly shift the focus to jrpgs, brilliant.

I smell peasantry from the OP.