Comments on: Unreal Engine 4 to “exclusively target console”

By: lumpi

lumpi — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:40:41 +0000

I don’t miss them.

Have fun on consoles, but quit butchering PC games. I’m fine with it.

By: br3ntbr0

br3ntbr0 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:23:05 +0000

Major failure by Epic. Cliffy B lacks the vision to see how the Unreal Engine could be utilized in MMO development, which is where the growth is for PC games. PC gaming is changing, and they have no concept on how to capitalize on it apparently. Changing does not mean death, I’d argue that PC gaming is financially more lucrative than ever…for those that get it.

By: Larington

Larington — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:47:16 +0000

Unfortunately I’m going to be stuck on my anti-FPS-consoling until I see more inventiveness on the level of goldeneye (Not necessarily success), but I know that it won’t be particularly likely because all the companies who have run to the consoles are doing it because they are risk averse (Mind you, I’m picking up on rumours that suggest that WiiWare may soon be the place to go for inovative new titles).

Meanwhile, I find PCs to be a much more attractive platform because they are more suited to mods, user generated content and so on and so forth.
Consoles cannot replace PCs and never will, they’ve simply carved out their own (Admittedly larger) market, but to say that just because consoles are there and more successful means that PC gaming is going to collapse is a significant overstatement and honestly, I take offence to it.

By: Culprit

Culprit — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:17:50 +0000

I have yet to own a console (Wii is tempting + Fit); I’ve been FPSing since Wolf3D. I like some RTT/RTS (WiC is fun), but I really like new gameplay over anything else. That’s why I still play Source MODs and indy games more than just about anything else. I’m glad some of these are starting to trickle into the console-land, but the ground is often broken on the PC first.

I really hope that PC/console gaming will get away from the “chrome” driven concepts and start pushing out new ideas (physics/portals/etc) and new interfaces. Track IR and haptic controllers and wiimotes and stuff really get my attention more than slightly evolved gameplay with extra photo-finish(TM).

By: Mo

Mo — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:45:15 +0000

But that’s my point, they shouldn’t be. The FX 5200 Go is actually a solid card … it’ll draw polygons like it’s nobodies business. :) Where it doesn’t work too well is with pixel shadery stuff, and that is, for the most part, fluff. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to play a game on my laptop at 640×480, with low-res textures, and shaders disabled.

If PC developers insist that everyone has to have a good graphics card, of course their games aren’t going to sell!

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:17:05 +0000

crappy *Laptop* grahics card and 512 MB RAM are the bottlenecks.

By: Mo

Mo — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:07:34 +0000

Agreed. It’s not the finest system. It’s a 2.8GHz, 512mb RAM, GeForce FX 5200 Go. The “Go” brings up an important point … a laptop. Which I know isn’t the best for gaming, but as a student (and a developer) it’s critical that I have a laptop.

But why everything insists on running so slow is a mystery to me. Most games are still single-core, and I’ve got one of the fastest single-cores ever. :) RAM is probably an issue, but I’m betting it’s the videocard that’s slowing everything down. Now the 5200 is a shit card, but it can draw plenty of polygons with ease. What it can’t do is draw plenty of pixelshaded polygons. If developers scaled their games down to fixed-pipeline graphics, there’d be alot more people playing games. Even integrated graphics cards would work! They’d look like utter crap, but that’s okay … I set the graphics to “low” I know what I’m getting into. :)

Also,

who gives a damn their last engine was over hyped anyway imo bioshock engine was better

The Bioshock engine is the Unreal 3 engine.

I LOL’d *so* hard. :)

By: John P (Katsumoto)

John P (Katsumoto) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:39:21 +0000

If your pc takes an hour to install games and runs things at less than 10fps at 640 x 480 despite only being a couple of years old, you probably just bought a crap pc. Just sayin’.

By: Alec Meer

Alec Meer — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:27:30 +0000

The Bioshock engine is the Unreal 3 engine.

By: brynden

brynden — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:26:27 +0000

who gives a damn their last engine was over hyped anyway imo bioshock engine was better assassins creed engine is way better half2 engine is as much as good and way older gothic 3 engine was way better crysis was better and others more so they can keep it

By: martin

martin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:11:42 +0000

i do play pc games and most of the time there are no problems. If a problem occurs the problem is the game itself and not the pc, at least in my experience.

you are right console fanboys are as bad as pc elitists, but it is still true that epic has released the same stuff year after year, just with more chrome. console gamers tend to be younger or are not so long into gaming than pc gamers so most of this stuff is totally new for them but it’s old hat for pc gamers.

and don’t forget that many devs and publishers have made the pc games experience worse themselves by publishing beta software (so what just release patch after patch), using problem-ridden anti-piracy software etc.

i think valve did it ride with steam. ok, it fells shitty that they can revoke your licence anytime but why should they and steam is still better than dvd-checks, starforce etc. steam or steam like services are the future for pc gaming.

By: Mo

Mo — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:45:19 +0000

I take offence to all the comments going, “Epic release the same shitty games on consoles, and console gamers are too dumb to notice the game is shit!” You know, I can’t decide which is worse, console fanboys furiously arguing over which console is the best, or PC Elitist snobs.

Putting piracy aside for a moment, I’d say the biggest problem with the PC is that there is far too much work involved in getting a game up and running. Drivers, sub-par hardware, the hour it takes for your average game to install, patching, tweaking settings, so on. I’m just not arsed any more.

The other issue is that the average lifetime of a computer is too short. My PC is a couple of years old, and it runs modern games at sub-10fps, even at 640×480 with everything on low. That shouldn’t happen. I don’t care if the game looks terrible, I just want to play it. If I can play it, I can have fun. And if I have fun, I’ll probably be enticed into buying a higher spec PC.

When it came down to it, I took convenience over marginally better quality. Work exhausts me. When I come home, I want to be able to pop in a DVD and have it “just work”. Consoles do that. PCs need to do that too.