| vlad321 said: I find it interesting that costs of games ROSE this generatoin, where you claim it's easier and cheaper to create games because of uniformity, than before when they were mostly focused on the PC. I mean shit, half of Activision's profits come from WoW, and they really have to struggle to make it into the black. So theoretically yes, you are correct, realistically though the industry is in a worse position now than it has ever been before this standardized hardware. Keep in mind that libraries for PCs are also far more standardized now than they were in the mid 90s, with card makers also putting a lot of effort in optimizing their cards for games that come out. ... As to your final question, you know my opinion very well on that as well. To me the quality of games, mostly because they serve the least common denominator now ( and I'm not talking Wii Sports and those, I'm talking FPSs, RPGs, and other games people think are "hardcore" which are laughably casual this gen) than before 2005. Meanwhile that same least common denominator also seems to be latched onto good graphics and how much they mean. As before, you are theoretically correct, however realistically ever since the standardization of hardware this gen came about, quality has exponentially falle, and graphics have become more meaningful to the masses. tl;dr: Yes everything you say should be the way you say. However, realistically, ever since 2005 and this new gen that has standardized and brought so much control to everything came about, quality of games are down, giving a shit about graphics is up, and developers are having a harder and harder time covering costs.
Edit: SOmething that is very laughable about that video. He said something along the lines of "We no longer need the traditional PC because..." and proceeded to list out 5-6 different devices. I hate to break it to this guy, but hardware converges, it doesn't converge. I don't have fuckign space for a tablet, a phone, an mp3 player, and whatever else he mentioned in there. I used ot have a powerful laptop, then i exchganed it for a PC which I'm pretty sure is The Beast from Revelations, and a small notebook for $250. I will not lie to you, that was the absolutely best swithc I ever did. I have written entire database backbones on that little pocket calculator, something no device besides a computer can do. At the same time when I need brute horsepower, I have my desktop tower. Edit2: Also yes, shows movies etc. can be watched on the small thing as well. On top of email, etc. etc. etc. |
Sorry for the late reply, been dreading reading and taking the time to respond to a long post (and I sometimes lost interest when I don't post in a thread for a while...)
Anyways!
Game development costs haven't risen because it's focused on consoles, it has risen because more is expected of developers. You could actually argue that consoles are keeping costs down since if we were developing only for PC we would constantly have more and more powerful hardware to deal with and have to create better and better.
Yes, the industry is in a shaky place at the moment, but that really has nothing to do with PC or console gaming.
I don't know if quality overall has fallen, it's just that right now games are a big risk and taking a leap of faith in game is big risk. You can either make something original and out there or you can build what you know will sell. You call things like Call of Duty the lowest common denominator because it's easy and that's fine, but it also allows more people to get into games. I don't really like it either way, but it's what people like and it sells. I'm really not sure what the complaint is. I'm sure if it was shit-in-a-box and it sold bazillions I could see getting upset over it, but like it or not, it's a quality game that people want.
Costs are really high right now because some games just have infinite budgets and have set the bar unrealistacally high. Killzone 3, FFXIII, and Gran Turismo 5 are great examples. I won't say a word about their gameplay but just look at the games. These all had infinite budgets where the developer got to take all the time they needed to make their game as good as possible (or at least as good looking as possible). They release and they blow people away because they look amazing.
Now, every game must live up to those which most developers just can't do, or more specifically, they can't do with their budget, or even more specifically, they can't do with their budget and make something completely original. That isn't the fault of consoles or PC gaming, that's just humans being visual beings. If you look at two similar games side-by-side, you're going to take the one that looks better.
But I digress, that really has nothing to do with the topic.
What does tl;dr mean?
