Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by FrostiE »

RuadRauFlessa wrote:Anakha56... I have to agree. Consoles are non-upgradable platforms with fixed hardware. Yes it is easier to code for them and design models and environments which will run on them optimally as you know what is in the damn thing. But that being said the tech in a PS3 is about 3-4 years old already.
Lol. Really?

Not sure where you came up with that. Modelling is a rather platform independent process, and any difference in software used from one studio to the next, in regards to the actual modelling itself, has nothing to do with the platform being developed for, but the artists or studio's personal preferences. Its not like: "We're working on the PS3, damn, I have to use 3ds max...". If anything, I'd imagine that asset creation for console titles is more tedious because of the technological limits.

On that note, while I agree that in one respect console development, coding wise, is easier because you don't have a myriad of different hardware, and the compatibility blues that comes with it, to worry about - there are other considerations. I'd imagine that trying to make a new title look even semi 'modern' on old technology would involve an unholy amount of optimisation, none of which is going to be fun or easy. And then there's the PS3, which everyone seems to find incredibly hard to develop for. Well, with the exception of the Killzone 2 dev's. The again, maybe its just me, but if I where to choose to try and insult countless industry professionals - much like they did, I'd probably find a more coherent argument than "Multi-threading is hard. Thats why we don't like developing for the Xbox and PC, and why we love developing for the PS3 - with its 10 available hardware threads!".

The reason more developers make console games is because the likelihood of a console title being picked up by a publisher is greater than that of a PC game, apparently. And I'd imagine the reason why publishers are more willing to produce console games has to do with console gamers by large being less demanding and more willing to part with their hard earned cash - just look at the prices of console games. Come to think of it, the mentality behind the publishing of console games, while a gross generalisation and not without a good few exceptions, is kind of like that of modern art - you could ***** on a piece of canvas and people would still be willing to pay an inordinate amount of money for it, so why even bother with talent or skill? Just take laxatives.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by StarBound »

Normal retail price = $40 / R300 for pc games.
Full retail price = $60 / R500 / R700 for pc/console games.
The expectation is that games will sell 3 million unites. Remember the days of going gold? Going gold meant 1 million sales and that was still at the $40 mark. Everyone is the industry is blaming something else. Piracy is killing the platform, 2nd hand gaming is killing the platform. Here is the thing. Games are more expensive, have less entertainment value as of late and then companies are complaining that the sales figures are not what it should be and closes down. Look at Quake, quake 2, half life, unreal, UT, Quake 3. The games came pouring out and we jumped onto the next thing and started shooting people in new ways. Then comes Call of Duty which now is known as the gorilla of the console market and no fps dares to stand up to it. Why? Because it just is better than what everyone else is putting out there. I only started playing CoD from CoD4 and the game was my counter strike beater. For 4 years we have seen sequels now and other games in between but after your done shooting you went back to the better one.

Developers can improve PC games way beyond their console counter parts. They can use the new updated hardware. They wont however do this for the original 1 million people or so who use to support their games. You were 1 in a million. Now if your not saticefied with the garbage on pc you are 1 in 25 million gamers who only make up 1 of the 1 million pc gamers.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by StarBound »

My brother figured since he liked MW2 and Black Ops single player he will try CoD4 and because the ps3 was forgiving with these games controls he figured he would simply get it for ps3. Finally I have the game that started this Craze of Duty that we have been having recently and I was expecting to see the console clumsiness that everyone is complaining about. There is just one problem. It is not there.

Call of Dury 4 Modern Warfare plays EXACTLY like the pc counter part. No dedicated servers and a similar match making system that doesnt take long to find games. But the game features proper hit detection and none of this ninja knifing bull crap that we have been seeing since MW2. Make no mistake. The game is dated. Less perks, less weapon load outs, less weapon options. But the gameplay out of everything is so stupidly solid that every hit matters. There is none of this knife crap where you hit the guy next to you, no shooting infront of the guy and getting a kill. This is what the game was. A PC gem on console? Or a proper game? You decide.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by -Prometheus- »

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Last edited by -Prometheus- on 03 Apr 2011, 22:51, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by GreyWolf »

1 thing bothers me. How is it that games made for consoles, which have 1 hardware configuration and therefore must be less complicated to develop, are more expensive than games developed for the PC market where any combination of hardware AND operating system is possible?
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by rustypup »

GreyWolf wrote:How is it that games made for consoles are more expensive than games developed for the PC market
the tall tale told is: licensing... or, as the rest of the thinking world refers to it, "sucker born every minute"....
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by Siemens »

GreyWolf wrote:How is it that games made for consoles are more expensive than games developed for the PC market
Apple want 30% stake of all the software(games included) selled for one of it's products so the developer/publishers needs to increase their costs to get what they deserve. If that makes sense.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by rustypup »

the apple playstation?

the apple xbox?

:lol:whut?
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by Siemens »

rustypup wrote:the apple playstation?

the apple xbox?

:lol:whut?
Apple the company to all it's platforms. And yes the iPhone is actually seen a competitor to the PSP.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by wizardofid »

Lol. Really?

Not sure where you came up with that. Modelling is a rather platform independent process, and any difference in software used from one studio to the next, in regards to the actual modelling itself, has nothing to do with the platform being developed for, but the artists or studio's personal preferences. Its not like: "We're working on the PS3, damn, I have to use 3ds max...". If anything, I'd imagine that asset creation for console titles is more tedious because of the technological limits.
Tedious? actually the exact same models are used with the exact same software, and 3D max as such is old news, there has been a recent shift over to Softimage XSI.

If you had any idea of how modeling actually work you would not make statements like that.Generally speaking models start out on a high polygon count where by at texture is applied and then baked exported and then with simple polygon reduction tools is reduced in polygon size.Texture reapplied and then the necessary adjustments made to the uvmap and model.However animation may be different compared, but now days you have advance enough scripting that allows you depending on platform to ignore specific animation frames as well as ignore death animations if it is problematic for example.

Which results in your final product, mostly console models and PC models have more or less the same polygon count, as such the major differences may the use of dynamic or static entity shaders. Texture resolution reduction is also common practice and of course polygon reduction but to a lesser extent to what you actually think.

Porting models from and to a console is relatively easy.It is even possible to have those same models scaled for the portable ones.And you would be none the wiser.

Consoles have been designed with compatibility in mind not for the porting perspective but from a development one.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by -Prometheus- »

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Last edited by -Prometheus- on 03 Apr 2011, 22:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by wizardofid »

Blizzard has to pay Sony R200 for the right to sell its own game so it has to tag it onto the R300 it already asks. That's why they never sell for cheap even at the end of their life. That will change as more people become aware of the fact that the corner flea market sells the exact same game with a less flashy cover, no manual, a case that isn't precision micro engineered, and without a royalty fee for a third of the price. It will become more sensible to develop for the pc only but they'll need to stop alienating their customers with stupid DRM.
What about sony ? They are really not all that innocent constantly patching their OS not to improve but to block the use of other software..PSP comes to mind the home brew for the PSP was excellent most of the times legal.Just because they are not receiving revenue....sony decided screw the little guys.
So consoles does not exactly have a clean bill of health either.Sony has some DRM protection as well not that you will notice it with original games.

I am agreeing that some DRM protection is just annoying on PC games.Online activation is not all that bad compared to securerom and starforce protections.But PC games require better protection compared to consoles....
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by -Prometheus- »

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Last edited by -Prometheus- on 03 Apr 2011, 22:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by FrostiE »

wizardofid wrote:Tedious? actually the exact same models are used with the exact same software, and 3D max as such is old news, there has been a recent shift over to Softimage XSI.

If you had any idea of how modeling actually work you would not make statements like that.Generally speaking models start out on a high polygon count where by at texture is applied and then baked exported and then with simple polygon reduction tools is reduced in polygon size.Texture reapplied and then the necessary adjustments made to the uvmap and model.However animation may be different compared, but now days you have advance enough scripting that allows you depending on platform to ignore specific animation frames as well as ignore death animations if it is problematic for example.

Which results in your final product, mostly console models and PC models have more or less the same polygon count, as such the major differences may the use of dynamic or static entity shaders. Texture resolution reduction is also common practice and of course polygon reduction but to a lesser extent to what you actually think.

Porting models from and to a console is relatively easy.It is even possible to have those same models scaled for the portable ones.And you would be none the wiser.

Consoles have been designed with compatibility in mind not for the porting perspective but from a development one.
The EXACT same models are used, eh? I think your forgetting that the implications of developing for various platforms with varying hardware limitations extend a little further than downsizing the odd texture or two - hence why asset's poly counts will often differ from platform to platform.

Now, don't get me wrong, poly cruncher and the likes are great. I've used them countless times myself, and they provide a solid base for low poly models, but if your definition of creating a low poly model ends at using "a simple polygon reduction tool", I'd have to say your workflow is rather slap-dash. You'll almost always get better results through a little manual effort, and the less poly's available, the more tedious realising details becomes. Hence my comment. Your trying to squeeze more out of less.

Oh, and onto the programs used. I have to agree... oh wait, I did, originally. The software used is platform independent. I'll also agree that max isn't exactly bleeding edge, but then again, I didn't exactly expect anyone to read into an analogy that's so obviously tongue in cheek...
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by wizardofid »

Actually PS3 has a limit of 275 million polygons and the Xbox 360 500 million and that is per second. roughly 1.5 billion vertices a second.Pretty awesome, don't you think, with that you can get away with about 20 thousand per unshaded model, 3500 per shaded model.In a real world environment you could have up to 150 thousand polygons on your screen without as much as a stutter on these consoles.....go figure.

Guess what that is pretty much what computers can handle as well, well a mid range system not every one can afford top brass stuff, so using exact same models is not out of the question, depending on game type, LOD, and clipping, and of course we are talking about professionals here so they know what they are doing.
And simple polygon reduction tools was meant in layman's terms.If I were to explain reducing points or faces or edges on a selectable bases for reduction, how many would actually understand that. Polygon reduction tools is never meant to reduce detailed models basic ones fine, manual labor will always be needed does matter how automatic it is.

And Nope software is not platform dependent, you could do you coding in borland not like PS3 supports it but yeah, but yeah PS3 probably supports a C variant.You have a lovely little tool made by Microsoft that can do games for windows and xbox 360 without having to break a sweat.

So yeah software is what ever you want to use as long as your platform supports it.

and owm awesome.
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Actually so much for you platform dependent theory.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

Post by Bladerunner »

Vicious:
Games using the Vicious Engine

* 300: March to Glory (2007)
* Alien Syndrome (2007)
* Curious George (2007)
* Dead Head Fred (2007)
* Dora the Explorer: Journey to the Purple Planet (2005)
* Flushed Away
* Marvel Trading Card Game (2007)
* Puzzle Quest (2007, PSP port)
* Desi Adda:Games of India (2009, PS2/PSP)
* Freekscape: Escape From Hell (2010, PS3/PSP)
I don't exactly spot any well-known games there. Guess the engine isn't that vicious...

Virtools: I couldn't find any games built with this engine, not even on their official portfolio page.

Unity: Same story.

Q / Qube:
Take up of Q 2.0 has been steady if unspectacular to date.
In fact only the Unreal and Rage engines were used for games I have actually heard of.

But:
Development of RAGE was a reaction to the acquisition of Criterion by video game conglomerate Electronic Arts.
Clearly you need a huge number of experts to make this work, properly, and actually develop some good games with.
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Re: Consoles Are Holding PC Games Back

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