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theprof00 on 12 February 2010
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twesterm said:
theprof00 said:
twesterm said:
theprof00 said:
microsoft must be learning something from sony here. Time to stop porting all the 360 games to pc, because nobody is going to buy your systems if your system sellers are on a platform they already own.

How many copies do you think PC games sell that aren't Sims, Halo, or WoW?  Even if Alan Wake did sell on the PC I doubt it would sell over 100k.

They probably just decided it wasn't worth their time to continue working on both versions.  I imagine that game already has a giant budget so they probably want to save money however they can without decreasing the overall quality.  By cutting the PC version they probably saved themselves a lot of money and allowed them to focus solely on the 360 version.

100k copies is 2-5M$.. that should be less of the cost of a port right? Have I also been misinformed in the past from vgc members that all 360 games are developed on the pc and that the two platforms are so similar that pc release requires only a nod?

Even if it's not that simple, wouldn't you make money on that investment? Porting couldn't cost that much...

On top of that, the decision thwarts pirates who own 360s and would rather download the game than pay for it on their console..and it's not just Alan Wake, there've been a lot of announcements of 360 games not making it to the pc. It smells like change is in the air.

As for how much they make per copy of the game, I can't tell you that because I don't know, though $2-3 million sounds about right.

As for the 360 and PC being the same, they're close but both must be tested and built differently.  At some point the two different SKU's do branch and that means more time and money.  If those two SKU's don't branch, all the time and money that would be put towards the PC version can then just be funneled into the 360 version or just not spend.

Up until more towards the end of the project I believe not much would be spent on the PC version since they are pretty close so them cutting the PC version wouldn't lose them a lot of money.  I doubt this decision was made yesterday and I doubt it was made in a day.  This has probably been something that has been in the works for a while.

So it probably boiled down to funnel that $3million-ish into the PC version which probably won't sell well at all and might barely make the money back, or funnel that $3million-ish into making the 360 version a 90+ game.

I don't have to be a MS exec to tell you which of those look better to them.

I mean, you would know better than I, but frankly, niether of us are right until an exec says so, and even then it could just be spin. Let's just settle for there being more than one reason to keep the game off PC, because my point is insanely valid too.