Games Industry Transitions In 2013: Will Consoles And Windows Rise Again?

Re:Games Industry Transitions In 2013: Will Consoles And Win... by barrkel on Sunday December 02, 2012 @06:58AM (#4860944)

I bought Far Cry 3 the other day, but had some problems playing it. Specifically, there are bugs in the key bindings mechanism, where some vehicles are stuck on the default key maps, even though the keys are configured differently in the preferences.

I looked into the key map preferences file, and it's fairly clear how the key mapping is implemented in the game: the defaults are hard-coded in, and "mapping" is implemented by basically having a search-and-replace filter on the incoming key stream. It's no wonder there are bugs; it seems that not all places that check for input run the input through the filter. What's missing is an indirection between the concepts of a keystroke and a command.

But the particularly revealing thing was when I went onto the Ubisoft forums to discuss the issue. The forum for Far Cry 3 Console has about 15x as many posts as the Far Cry 3 PC forum.

If revenues are similarly lopsided, it would explain why the PC version - the HUD and input system in particular - is such a crappy console port. It's because PC players are an afterthought, a minor bit of loose change to pick up after the bulk of the market has been addressed.

And in turn, the PC experience, from opening the box to getting the game running, is so unpleasant it turns more and more gamers away from the platform. It's not available on Steam in the UK, so I got the package in the mail. Ubisoft didn't even use proper plastic for the DVD box, it's all floppy and squeezable, like the plastic used for tomato ketchup or mayonnaise bottles. Ubisoft did almost everything they could to show their contempt for PC players.

So I am not optimistic for the future of PC games.

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Re:Games Industry Transitions In 2013: Will Consoles And Win... by JonLim on Sunday December 02, 2012 @09:31AM (#4861280)

I believe there is a vicious cycle that is occurring in PC gaming with the AAA game developers and publishers (Ubisoft and Rockstar come to mind) where PC ports will often be available a significant amount of time after console, or be of shoddy quality, or both. Perhaps as a consequence, PC sales are weak. And because of weak sales, there is less incentive to really push for simultaneous PC release for games or at the level of quality and polish that PC gamers demand, possibly affecting sales again.

I'm not sure how accurate pre-orders is as a sign of platform popularity, but with Assassin's Creed 3, (and if the numbers are accurate,) it seems like PC only makes up about 9%~ of pre-orders[1] with the rest being dominated by XBox 360 and PS3. That's an incredibly poor number to justify any sort of effort in PC gaming.

But of course, there are so many variables at play that these numbers could mean almost anything. Heck, I could even attribute it to AC3 being far more comfortable to play with a controller/console than a keyboard/mouse. And of course, they did release it 21 days after the console, so there's that.[2]

[1]: http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250519/usa-preorders-chart-2...

[2]: http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Assassins_Creed_III

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Re:Games Industry Transitions In 2013: Will Consoles And Win... by JVIDEL on Sunday December 02, 2012 @08:05AM (#4861077)

Same here, although things do look promising for gaming outside Windows.

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Re:Games Industry Transitions In 2013: Will Consoles And Win... by barrkel on Sunday December 02, 2012 @09:46PM (#4863625)

All other platforms but for Linux have much more user-hostile leaderships - and Linux is user-hostile for different, more incidental reasons. The only platform with hope for the user is Android, and it's not clear how it's going to play out in the long term, whether rooting will be tolerated or clamped down upon when in the presence of DRM.

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