The current state of PC gaming and effects of consoles.

Sh3rlock

Sh3rlock

Sh3rlock

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Internet warrior mode, activated.

Over the past few months/weeks, there has been some massive titles released on the gaming market. When I say massive, I mean flagship, such as Skyrim, BF3 and MW3. Titles which us gamers have been waiting for, saliva falling from our mouths, for months even years in some cases.

What is starting to annoy me is the quality of these games on retail release. These games are shipped to retailers and sold to us, riddled with bugs and in some cases very poor pc optimisation. It begs me to ask the question, are they really bothered or is pc gaming more of a problem for the dev's these days. Seriously though, these games must go through some sort of fault finding and where is the harm in working with the hardware companies to sort suitable drivers for the games release.

I am sat here with a more than capable rig, deflated, because Skyrim is running at 20FPS, has broken crossfire compatibility and god awful graphics.

The state of these games on release have been appalling and I hope it changes, soon.
 
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It's been this way since games started using 3d acceleration at least, go back to say 1998 and flagship games like Unreal and SiN were notorious for performance issues and bugs.

I think part of the 'problem' is that issues get publicised a lot more now, people talk about games on internet forums etc, in the old days you just got on and played games and didn't know that 30fps was bad or that if you tried to do XYZ you'd experience a bug.

Add to that the fact that the internet age makes it very easy to roll out patches etc, gone are the days when you needed version 1.0 to be extremely high quality.

What I tend to do is play games 6+ months after release, when they are cheaper, have been patched and potentially I'll have upgraded so better performance.
 
PC games have always been buggy on release. Unlike consoles, where developers have a fixed point of hardware to deal with, the PC market has numerous variables to deal with.

It is part of the package as when it works, it is untouchable.
 
Damien. said:
I am sat here with a more than capable rig, deflated, because Skyrim is running at 20FPS, has broken crossfire compatibility and god awful graphics.
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I am also getting terrible FPS with Skyrim, but i think it will be fixed with drivers/patches. I have to disagree with "God awful graphics" though, the game looks absolutely stunning for me. Granted it has some bad close up textures but i can live with that for the massive complex world you get:)
 
Things will only truly change when the new generation of consoles come out. But this year I have noticed theirs been a lot more focus on PC gaming than usual.
 
It was much worse in the past. PC games are far closer to plug and play than they ever have been.
Compared to 10 years ago, it's a walk in the park.
20 years ago (before I played) it took 10 - 20 mins to load with a 1 in 3 chance of crash.
If you have dual graphics, either ATI or NVidia, you're just begging for inconvinience, mostly only gains almost invisible levels of AA anyway.
The complexity of games (I mean from a technical standpoint, not necessarily gameplay) is exponentially higher than it was 10 years ago.
Even console games are fairly frequently released with potentially game breaking bugs (ie Tomb Raider Underworld, Fable 2), with post release heavy patching the norm.
 
I remember the days of trying to games to work with Windows ME, virtually impossible :(
 
PC gaming has always been a black art right from the days of having to push various TSR drivers into himem in order to get enough basemem to run wolf3d.

I don't see PC gaming worse, I see peoples expectations getting higher.
(But yeah, I do agree that things were rough for a while there, developers do seem to have remembered that PCs aren't just something you *make* games with.)
 
It won't change much as PC gaming does not sell the volume of console games for many years apart from the odd exception. Take the Witcher2 only sold 195,000 on Steam & another 800,000 plus @ retail on PC. Then look & Batman Arkham City over 5M on console within the first month or CODMW3 6.5M in US/UK alone on day 1!
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/11/steam-totally-dominates-witcher-2-sales/

PC is simply not a volume market for gaming as piracy is high & majority of PC gamers are not prepared to pay for full price games which has been proven time & time again by lack of publisher/developer interest. PC developers are seriously lazy as well & the lack of QA in most games is obvious so patching is the norm :rolleyes:

Digital sales help convert otherwise lost piracy sales but PC is a distant 3rd for most publisher/developers & if future consoles are more PC like then PC gaming will continue to shrink. The problem is pretty bad as consider the PC has 3-4 times more DX9 gaming capable machines than 360/PS3 combined gives you a clear understanding of the massive issue of getting the majority of PC gamers to buy the actual games @ full price :(
 
I for one give thanks to all those keyboard soldiers who find a need to buy pc games on release, who get stressed and annoyed at bugs that crash their games and wipe their saves. Its thanks to them that i can buy a game a month after the release date at half the price and with half the bugs! I salute those hardy men who lay down their sanity and wallets for me. God bless nerdom!
 
Developers are autistic children smearing their own **** all over the walls, it doesn't have to be like that but the publishers are the care workers who's years of sexual abuse have caused the developers to behave that way.

But hey, I'm a fecal smearing fan so I'm still looking forward to the next **** caked wall!
 
bushmins said:
I for one give thanks to all those keyboard soldiers who find a need to buy pc games on release, who get stressed and annoyed at bugs that crash their games and wipe their saves. Its thanks to them that i can buy a game a month after the release date at half the price and with half the bugs! I salute those hardy men who lay down their sanity and wallets for me. God bless nerdom!
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:D Here Here!
 
Damien. said:
BF3 and MW3. What is starting to annoy me is the quality of these games on retail release. These games are shipped to retailers and sold to us, riddled with bugs and in some cases very poor pc optimisation.
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I can't speak for skyrim but bf3 and mw3 are ok, no major issues for me other than mw3 needs higher resolution textures and a better animation system, and in most games there are graphical or gameplay glitches because of engine technology limitations, but both are good quality games imho.
 
I think you got it all about face really, it's the console base thats really in a sorry state.

Never can remember having to download patches or dlc to enjoy a full game before the xbox came along. Now that consoles are connected to the web it makes it so much easier to rush out a game for what ever holiday event or promotion to maximise sales and fix the bugs later. Developers know there is always a massive early adopters market regardless of what the sorry state the game is in and even still will try and smooth the waters with pre order dlc and other such junk.

I have found PC gaming is a whole lot better these days in terms of patching. Thankfully in the internet age (god I didn't just say that did I?) communication is far more easier, problems are picked up by developers a lot quicker from support forums, patches are delivered fast available in a load of different places and with the convenience of service such as Steam installed with out having to do a thing.

If anyone can remember back in the sepia toned days of floppy discs (like 10 or more of them) and no internet in sight you had to either put up with what ever problem there was or fill in the support card included in the gigantic box and pop it in the post box with hope that the developer would send you what ever patch on another 2 or so floppys.

A step up for that was patches being included on magazines cover cd's and dvd's (can remember desperately waiting for CS 1.6 on an issue of PC Gamer when dial up cost a fortune and have to have a telephone extension causing a death trap inside the house for 10 hours to download anything).
 
Good point actually. The 'state' of the console releases has undoubtedly declined faster than that of PC, although personally I'd rather have a possibly buggy game with the opportunity to patch it than a game that is unlikely to have serious bugs but cannot be patched (in the days before consoles had internet connections).
 
Would definitely agree that expectations have gone up, pc gamers want the best graphics, AI, modding options, grand multiplayer and free DLC for a comparative cheaper than console retail price.
 
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