Is this true?

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I was wondering if this is true as I saw it on this board?

Is most PC Games ported over from consoles meaning we don't get as good of a experience if it was specifically developed for the pc hardware?

Whats your opinion on this and would you like to see a different approach?
 
Depends on the game.

RTSes: no. Everything else yes.

The problem isn't yet as promounced as when the original XBox was boxing up all the games into little sections (Deus Ex 2, Thief 3, etc etc) but, as time goes by, the PC is more and more powerful than the consoles, and the lack of innovation becomes more apparent. Eg The Unreal Engine is currently on it's third version. It won't get an update until the next console generation, so all games built using it will struggle to implement new features. Physics is a good example, but arguably that's due to proprietary engines. Multi-platform development is the rule now, and so games must be similar across the consoles and PC. If it doesn't work on the console, you won't see it on the PC version.
 
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As above, depends on the game. Just because it's ported, doesnt make it inherently worse on the PC.

The ideal is parallel development, having three development teams building the framework of the game for each platform (e.g. cryengine 3), however that's clearly too expensive for most companies so I imagine that they'll stick to putting the money into doing the optimisation for the 360 and PS3, and then just porting the 360 version over to the PC in the cheapest way possible.

(because PCs are performance+stability powerhouses that don't need optimisation and proper testing, let alone a well thought out control system, right?..:rolleyes:)
 
I am not trolling but simply want better titles for the pc as Crysis is probably the best graphical looking and its 3 years old!
 
I am not trolling but simply want better titles for the pc as Crysis is probably the best graphical looking and its 3 years old!

you and me both brother. As has been said already, we're all waiting for next gen of consoles to free up devs to push existing boundaries and utilise the resources PCs already have.
 
On the other hand, Crysis truly raised the bar in graphical fidelity, similar to how far cry did. Only difference is that Crysis has lasted longer as the peak (although some would argue now that Metro 2033 is better looking...i wouldnt).

The problem really is that making anything that looks better (or at least has more extensive visual effects) than Crysis would be very expensive, and wouldnt have a chance of running on any console. So from a developer's point of view, it's better to scale back on the graphical quality and instead focus on optimising the game to run on a console, bringing out a ported release on PC. Thus they target all three platforms and get lots and lots of money from the outrageous console game prices.


Anyway graphics dont make a game inherently good, right? :p Maybe it's better to focus on getting good games, and then worry about how nice they look. Seems to be a problem throughout the games industry at the moment. Although for the moment I'm quite content with starcraft 2 (PC/Mac exclusive :D)
 
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you and me both brother. As has been said already, we're all waiting for next gen of consoles to free up devs to push existing boundaries and utilise the resources PCs already have.

but surely there is a big enough market to develop pc games earlier than next gen consoles as we currently got the hardware for it..

I don't think the pc should be the shadow of the consoles :confused:
 
I think we should start a thread as to what you're actually at, Coughs. I reckon it's a college course on game design and these are questions posed by your lecturers.

What's your opinion on this and would you like to see a different approach?
 
and it seems I'm not the only one who thinks this:

I wouldn't say it's doing fine. If it was doing fine, we would have loads of game devs pushing the boundaries in graphics. At the moment we have nothing more than ports with a bit of AA. The tech is there, the devs are not.

Pc gaming needs a kick up the arse imo. The only exclusive games it gets is the typical RTS :(
 
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