I see this thrown around on a very regular basis amongst PC gamers. "Crap quality PC port as usual." "Developer obviously doesn't care about PC". "Market has changed to consoles so devs only focus on them."
Etc etc.
I dont see it, though. Strikes me as something of a persecution complex more than anything. I mean, I can kind of see how people grow into this perspective, but it's mainly because they dont really look outside the PC gaming world and only focus on their main platform. And of course, everybody wants to feel like a victim. For some reason. I dont get it, but I see it all the time, everybody thinking the world is against them. There are a few legitimate complaints, but nothing that I see that affects the overall result dramatically.
So, why do I not see it? Quite a few reasons. And realize I'm speaking largely about this current generation, not the more distant past.
a) Games are not developed purely for consoles. In fact, *most* games are developed on PC's from the start. I dont think there are that many games that get built *solely* using console hardware. Even first party games often get their underpinnings started on regular PC hardware, only for the work to be 'ported' to consoles later. The impact of this isn't hugely major, because the stage at which the important optimizations and graphical enhancements are really strongly prioritized still happen on consoles in order to 'fine tune' things specifically for the hardware involved, but still, most game developers are not foreign to the concept of PC development.
b) Modern consoles are much more like traditional desktop PC's in architecture than previous generations. Historically, consoles have used very specialized, custom architectures. This had usually kept them *very* competitive with the PC hardware of the time. But now this specialized hardware has become less cost effective and the downsides of the difficulties in developing for it(seen largely with the PS2 and PS3) has just given devs headaches in an age where developing for multiple platforms is more desirable(given the increasing costs in game development, more platforms = more returns on investment). But overall, this more similar architecture means that porting from console to PC, or vice versa(which I'll get into), is not *quite* as difficult as it used to be. This may improve further, especially once we get DX12 and Vulkan.
c) The PC gaming market is getting stronger. It is growing at a respectable rate, and more developers are looking at this growing PC market to put their games on the platform(again, for more $$$ to offset increased dev costs). And all this just means the PC market grows even more, as more and more content comes to it. PC gaming is no longer the bastion for niche genres and super enthusiast nerds. Ease of use has improved by miles in the last 5 years, it's home to more AAA genres than ever, it is the home of indie gaming and this growing market has not squashed more PC-specific genres, only made them stronger.
d) Games that run poorly on PC *usually* also run poorly on consoles. This is often majorly overlooked. In these situations, we can see the problem is typically bad game design decisions or poor general coding/optimization, not necessarily laziness on the part of the PC version in particular. This really accounts for a vast majority of the so-called 'bad PC ports', at least from the major releases.
e) PC gamers often ignore all the many examples where consoles actually get the far worse version of a multiplatform title. Whereas examples of PC versions that are disproportionately worse than the console version(on near enough equivalent hardware) are quite small, the examples where console versions are disproportionately worse to the PC version are many.
f) PC gaming is not all about 'brute forcing' performance. The combination of an i3 and 750Ti has been shown to regularly match or exceed PS4 quality and performance in multiplatform titles. It's true that you *can* brute force many elements still, like spiffy fancy effects, MSAA, downsampling, etc, but usually I see that the performance seen on PS4(much less the XB1) *rarely* exceeds roughly equivalent hardware on PC. Which means it has very little to do with brute forcing from a baseline perspective.
g) Many games have development *led* on PC. Not just started, like with my first point, but started, led and finished on PC. Consoles might still get a good amount of attention, but not necessarily the lion's share.
The result is that I think PC gets the bulk of 'better versions' than consoles do. Honestly, even if I cant call them 'ports' necessarily, I think consoles get worse versions of games way more often than on PC. Games like AC Unity, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty games, Fallout 4, all games I've seen given the 'bad PC port' label, but all run worse on consoles.
The list of games that I think are genuinely bad PC ports this generation is very short, Arkham Knight being the poster child. Many of the others on my list would be Japanese games which, while not cool, is a bit understandable given their relatively new introduction to the western PC gaming scene. They are often not used to developing with arbitrary resolutions and framerates in mind from the get-go(as they usually make a game for one system or at least similar systems and thats it), which accounts for many of the problems. That should hopefully get better as time goes on and more Japanese games are developed with PC in mind from the beginning. The difference from Dark Souls 1 to Dark Souls 2 is a fantastic example of a Japanese dev understanding this.
I also think PC gamers should understand that developing/porting for PC is *not* easy. We are highly, highly demanding. What constitutes a 'good version' for us is a much higher standard than what a console gamer considers a 'good version'. We want options out the whazoo and we want them all to work and be performance efficient and we want everything to be perfectly stable no matter what random PC configuration we have. It's really not easy at all. I'm surprised so many devs actually go through the troubles they do, because it's gotta be a pain in the butt and a ton of extra work. So yea, when a PC game gets a delayed version - this is often why. It's true they are probably prioritizing the console versions for initial release, but the PC version being delayed is still necessary due to all the extra options and configurations that need to be included and catered to.
So, penultimate comment here - I'm going to list some games that I think are worse on console than on PC. Just for some perspective, so PC gamers dont think they are always the ones getting shafted.
- Battlefield 4(720p/900p on consoles)
- The Witcher 3(unable to hold 30fps on any console, took 6 months of patching to get it to a reasonable state even on PS4, low/mid graphics settings)
- The Evil Within(poor performance on consoles with black bars)
- Battlefield Hardline(720p/900p on consoles)
- Fallout 4(poor graphics settings on consoles with performance issues)
- Alien Isolation(baffling performance relative to PC where 60fps is achieved on toasters)
- Thief(initial frame pacing issues plus performance problems on consoles)
- Need for Speed Rivals(frame pacing issues that had to be patched out later)
- Borderlands: The Handsome Collection(performance problems only recently fixed)
- Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Version(sub-30fps on consoles)
- Saints Row 4 Re-Elected(erratic performance, no AA and poor texture filtering on consoles)
- Lords of the Fallen(poor performance on consoles)
- Resident Evil Revelations 2(erratic performance on consoles)
- Dishonored Definitive Edition(30fps on consoles, while 1080p/60fps is super easy to achieve on PC)
- Just Cause 3(ridiculous loading times and terrible performance on consoles)
I am probably missing a bunch, but I think you get the gist. Consoles get 'the short end of the stick' quite often. It is no way a better place to be if you want well optimized titles.
Now, I'm not saying things are ideal or perfect on PC. There's still some truth that developers put more attention on consoles. It's natural in the AAA game industry, as that's usually where most of the sales are. But I think PC gamers see things being far worse than they actually are. Like we're some unwanted, uncared-for market, which is not true whatsoever. I would argue that if you care about technical aspects and performance, PC is where it is at, and not only just for people with high end 'brute force' rigs.
Anyways, hope some people actually read through all this! I'm sure I've forgotten some of the points I meant to make and feel free to respond with counterpoints or whatever thoughts of your own y'all have. I dont want to make this into a platform wars thread, so try to be reasonable, no outright, irrational bashing of consoles or anything, or pigeonholing of PC or console gamers in some generalized negative way.
Etc etc.
I dont see it, though. Strikes me as something of a persecution complex more than anything. I mean, I can kind of see how people grow into this perspective, but it's mainly because they dont really look outside the PC gaming world and only focus on their main platform. And of course, everybody wants to feel like a victim. For some reason. I dont get it, but I see it all the time, everybody thinking the world is against them. There are a few legitimate complaints, but nothing that I see that affects the overall result dramatically.
So, why do I not see it? Quite a few reasons. And realize I'm speaking largely about this current generation, not the more distant past.
a) Games are not developed purely for consoles. In fact, *most* games are developed on PC's from the start. I dont think there are that many games that get built *solely* using console hardware. Even first party games often get their underpinnings started on regular PC hardware, only for the work to be 'ported' to consoles later. The impact of this isn't hugely major, because the stage at which the important optimizations and graphical enhancements are really strongly prioritized still happen on consoles in order to 'fine tune' things specifically for the hardware involved, but still, most game developers are not foreign to the concept of PC development.
b) Modern consoles are much more like traditional desktop PC's in architecture than previous generations. Historically, consoles have used very specialized, custom architectures. This had usually kept them *very* competitive with the PC hardware of the time. But now this specialized hardware has become less cost effective and the downsides of the difficulties in developing for it(seen largely with the PS2 and PS3) has just given devs headaches in an age where developing for multiple platforms is more desirable(given the increasing costs in game development, more platforms = more returns on investment). But overall, this more similar architecture means that porting from console to PC, or vice versa(which I'll get into), is not *quite* as difficult as it used to be. This may improve further, especially once we get DX12 and Vulkan.
c) The PC gaming market is getting stronger. It is growing at a respectable rate, and more developers are looking at this growing PC market to put their games on the platform(again, for more $$$ to offset increased dev costs). And all this just means the PC market grows even more, as more and more content comes to it. PC gaming is no longer the bastion for niche genres and super enthusiast nerds. Ease of use has improved by miles in the last 5 years, it's home to more AAA genres than ever, it is the home of indie gaming and this growing market has not squashed more PC-specific genres, only made them stronger.
d) Games that run poorly on PC *usually* also run poorly on consoles. This is often majorly overlooked. In these situations, we can see the problem is typically bad game design decisions or poor general coding/optimization, not necessarily laziness on the part of the PC version in particular. This really accounts for a vast majority of the so-called 'bad PC ports', at least from the major releases.
e) PC gamers often ignore all the many examples where consoles actually get the far worse version of a multiplatform title. Whereas examples of PC versions that are disproportionately worse than the console version(on near enough equivalent hardware) are quite small, the examples where console versions are disproportionately worse to the PC version are many.
f) PC gaming is not all about 'brute forcing' performance. The combination of an i3 and 750Ti has been shown to regularly match or exceed PS4 quality and performance in multiplatform titles. It's true that you *can* brute force many elements still, like spiffy fancy effects, MSAA, downsampling, etc, but usually I see that the performance seen on PS4(much less the XB1) *rarely* exceeds roughly equivalent hardware on PC. Which means it has very little to do with brute forcing from a baseline perspective.
g) Many games have development *led* on PC. Not just started, like with my first point, but started, led and finished on PC. Consoles might still get a good amount of attention, but not necessarily the lion's share.
The result is that I think PC gets the bulk of 'better versions' than consoles do. Honestly, even if I cant call them 'ports' necessarily, I think consoles get worse versions of games way more often than on PC. Games like AC Unity, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty games, Fallout 4, all games I've seen given the 'bad PC port' label, but all run worse on consoles.
The list of games that I think are genuinely bad PC ports this generation is very short, Arkham Knight being the poster child. Many of the others on my list would be Japanese games which, while not cool, is a bit understandable given their relatively new introduction to the western PC gaming scene. They are often not used to developing with arbitrary resolutions and framerates in mind from the get-go(as they usually make a game for one system or at least similar systems and thats it), which accounts for many of the problems. That should hopefully get better as time goes on and more Japanese games are developed with PC in mind from the beginning. The difference from Dark Souls 1 to Dark Souls 2 is a fantastic example of a Japanese dev understanding this.
I also think PC gamers should understand that developing/porting for PC is *not* easy. We are highly, highly demanding. What constitutes a 'good version' for us is a much higher standard than what a console gamer considers a 'good version'. We want options out the whazoo and we want them all to work and be performance efficient and we want everything to be perfectly stable no matter what random PC configuration we have. It's really not easy at all. I'm surprised so many devs actually go through the troubles they do, because it's gotta be a pain in the butt and a ton of extra work. So yea, when a PC game gets a delayed version - this is often why. It's true they are probably prioritizing the console versions for initial release, but the PC version being delayed is still necessary due to all the extra options and configurations that need to be included and catered to.
So, penultimate comment here - I'm going to list some games that I think are worse on console than on PC. Just for some perspective, so PC gamers dont think they are always the ones getting shafted.
- Battlefield 4(720p/900p on consoles)
- The Witcher 3(unable to hold 30fps on any console, took 6 months of patching to get it to a reasonable state even on PS4, low/mid graphics settings)
- The Evil Within(poor performance on consoles with black bars)
- Battlefield Hardline(720p/900p on consoles)
- Fallout 4(poor graphics settings on consoles with performance issues)
- Alien Isolation(baffling performance relative to PC where 60fps is achieved on toasters)
- Thief(initial frame pacing issues plus performance problems on consoles)
- Need for Speed Rivals(frame pacing issues that had to be patched out later)
- Borderlands: The Handsome Collection(performance problems only recently fixed)
- Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Version(sub-30fps on consoles)
- Saints Row 4 Re-Elected(erratic performance, no AA and poor texture filtering on consoles)
- Lords of the Fallen(poor performance on consoles)
- Resident Evil Revelations 2(erratic performance on consoles)
- Dishonored Definitive Edition(30fps on consoles, while 1080p/60fps is super easy to achieve on PC)
- Just Cause 3(ridiculous loading times and terrible performance on consoles)
I am probably missing a bunch, but I think you get the gist. Consoles get 'the short end of the stick' quite often. It is no way a better place to be if you want well optimized titles.
Now, I'm not saying things are ideal or perfect on PC. There's still some truth that developers put more attention on consoles. It's natural in the AAA game industry, as that's usually where most of the sales are. But I think PC gamers see things being far worse than they actually are. Like we're some unwanted, uncared-for market, which is not true whatsoever. I would argue that if you care about technical aspects and performance, PC is where it is at, and not only just for people with high end 'brute force' rigs.
Anyways, hope some people actually read through all this! I'm sure I've forgotten some of the points I meant to make and feel free to respond with counterpoints or whatever thoughts of your own y'all have. I dont want to make this into a platform wars thread, so try to be reasonable, no outright, irrational bashing of consoles or anything, or pigeonholing of PC or console gamers in some generalized negative way.
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