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As someone in the AAA games industry, let me address the following quote: "It only takes a little extra work to make your PC games play on the PC, and make gam

by Symbol 15y ago

As someone in the AAA games industry, let me address the following quote: "It only takes a little extra work to make your PC games play on the PC, and make gamers happy" Sadly, that's naive. Like any other software company, there are diminishing returns for features / revenue. When the product is slated for release on Xbox, PS3, and PC it is typically done with one codebase with platform specific code where necessary. You often end up with a common denominator where the PC people usually feel left out in the cold.I can attest that it takes a monumental amount of work to support the myriad graphics card configurations for the sole purpose of getting your game to look/feel ROUGHLY the same on all three platforms. To customize the game for one platform would be at the expense of the other two (from a development, production, and QA perspective) and it often doesn't make sense to those paying the bills. Sometimes the PC gets a dedicated port (such as Mass Effect for the PC), and those things that make PC gamers smile get added. However, this port is essentially a new project (SKU in retail games parlance) that is greenlit only if the console versions of the game have sold well enough to warrant it, and is typically done by a third party under extreme time pressure. All these factors contribute to less polish, which everyone involved is keenly aware of. Hopefully I've illustrated that this is a complex problem that can hardly be addressed by a "it doesn't take that much more effort to do a good job" platitude.

onli 15y ago
I think you somewhat missed the point. Sure it is complex to support all gpus. But that's not the point of the article. The article is about small things like being able to customize the controls and not having to login in an useless service. Those are thing possible without much effort. If you dou a port and miss to modify the basics, you ruin your port, your reputation, and thus lose money. There is no point in doing the awful part of the port, like gpu-support, but miss the easy but necessary steps.
- Symbol 15y ago
  And I'm trying to say that, in most cases, these things appear to be superficially easy but are more complex than you give it credit for. In almost all cases, the sad fact is that a playable version on the PC will generate sales. Any deeper level of polish is only diminishing returns. It may sound like I'm hating on PC gaming but I'm not. I only am giving my perspective from inside the sausage factory.

by Symbol 15y ago

onli 15y ago

I think you somewhat missed the point. Sure it is complex to support all gpus. But that's not the point of the article. The article is about small things like being able to customize the controls and not having to login in an useless service. Those are thing possible without much effort. If you dou a port and miss to modify the basics, you ruin your port, your reputation, and thus lose money. There is no point in doing the awful part of the port, like gpu-support, but miss the easy but necessary steps.

Symbol 15y ago
And I'm trying to say that, in most cases, these things appear to be superficially easy but are more complex than you give it credit for. In almost all cases, the sad fact is that a playable version on the PC will generate sales. Any deeper level of polish is only diminishing returns. It may sound like I'm hating on PC gaming but I'm not. I only am giving my perspective from inside the sausage factory.