Same Engine? Same Gameplay? Same Basic Features? In a New Game?

[rocketpig]

mirgro said:
I'm talking about gaming as a whole here, PC and console. PC has had indie games for ages, so I don't see how "arrival of indie games" is a bonus to this generations because they have been around. You also don't have to tell me about these games since I'd place World of Goo above any, and I mean any, game released this year. That incliudes Empire Total War, Killzone 2, Uncharted 2, etc. etc. In fact I bought WoG twice as a present to my brother on his wii.

Also developers choose to spend millions on their games, no one is forcing them to spend millions and millions, as with my World of Goo example, it took 2 ex-EA employees. That's all it takes to make a game that last for a long long time, not 200 million and 150 guys + PR working on a game. I only look at the bad stuff for gaming, there hasn't been any good stuff. The PC has covered online just fine, the consoles plu-and-play, and this generation has only brought encroachment into the PC territory from the consoles, and offering none of the benefits of PC gaming. The consoles have brought nothing to this generation other than better graphics, and as the Wii shows people don't even give a damn about those all that much.

Now that developers have the means to release expansion packs on consoles, they aren't, when they should be. That's the real problem. The closest thing to an expansion pack was Halo 3 ODST, they even labeled it as such. How much did it cost? $60.

You're completely ignoring that a boxed expansion of a PC game usually runs $30-40 as well. What makes up the difference between console and PC games? Platform licensing. That's why PC games generally clock in at $10-20 less than their console counterparts and aren't nearly as tied to the MSRP as a console title (hence seeing Fry's and other big box retailers often blow out a new PC game for $20 to attract customers).

You bring up World of Goo... which illustrates my point. When this type of delivery system is roughly two years old while its PC counterpart is roughly two years older than that, you still expect the console world to magically catch up overnight? Developers are still figuring out how this works. Give it time.

There are millions of gamers who never played on PC... only console. Yet, because you've experienced PC superiority, consoles should just avoid that market entirely? Again, your logic makes no sense. Consoles are bringing the best (and a few of the worst) parts of PC gaming to a plug-and-play environment and you're cursing them for it. Well, okay, that's great. You have to realize that to many people, this is an entirely new experience because they never bothered with PC gaming in the past. I, for one, even as a PC gamer, welcome the change. It's progress, though there will surely be bumps along the road as it's all figured out and consumers decide what is a good deal and what is a rip-off.

As for your "200 million and 150 guys" argument, did it ever occur to you that's one of the few ways to make money in the console environment? It has ALWAYS been that way, though the numbers weren't as high. As technology improves, budgets will rise, and over time, it will balance out as middleware devs ease some of the burden and developers learn to more accurately target their demographic, which XBLM and PSN will allow them to do.

You keep cursing consoles for adding online and storage without realizing that's the only way they're going to be able to get past this financial hurdle without completely tearing down their retailing structure and licensing programs, which will never happen. The only other option is for console gaming to completely ignore high definition and stick with PS2-era graphics until the end of time. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.