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twesterm on 27 August 2010
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vlad321 said:
twesterm said:

The problem with PC games is they have no standards enforced on them like console games do.  If you're making a console game, they have to pass certain requirements enforced by Sony, Microsoft, and/or Nintendo (the game has to be submitted to each console you want your game on).  If your game is being put on PC, there's nothing that checks to make sure they pass those certain requirements.

If the game is something like a 360/PS3/PC game then the big stuff will at least be handled by the 360 and PS3 submissions but since PC games don't generally make as much money as console games anyways, it's a crap-shoot if the developer actually puts a lot of time into making sure everything is hunky-dory on the PC.

Furthermore, while there are only a few different PS3, Xblx, and Wii configurations out there, there are an infinite amount of PC configurations and those all cannot be tested.  You can hit the big ones but, again, with the PC version of games bringing in a much smaller profit than the console version, there's not a large incentive to test the game on many different configurations.

I know PC enthusiasts love theirs PC gaming and think it's the best, but PC gaming is really the red headed stepchild of the game industry and is becoming less and less significant.  It's just easier to make console games and it's easier to make money on console games.  It costs too much money to thoroughly test a PC game and the return is just too little.

(and yes, I realize there are exceptions)

That is only and solely true when your game is made like crap. Didn't Bioware come out and say that its best market is still the PC, same with Valve and Blizzard? I am fairly sure other companies that make good games are also pretty satisfied. In fact if I am not wrong, even Activision would have gone heavily in the red last year if it wasn't for the massive money they made off the PC. They barely broke even in the quarters when MW2 was making record sales. THQ's sales were also heavily boosted by DoWII/exnasion and SEGA had Empire Total War. If they had been making just console games and no decent PC games they would have been in some seriously deep shit. The companiesneed the PC market desperately if they want to survive.


As I said, there are always exceptions.  In general though, PC games don't make near the amount of money console games do.