By John Walker on May 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am.
Why did LucasArts appear to abandon original development in favour of churning out Star Wars games sausage factory-style? Because they got “a little excited.” And why no Force Unleased on PC? Because console-equivalent PCs cost £2000, apparently.
While interviewing the producer responsible for the current-gen consoles, VideoGamer.com learned the Star Wars obsession was all down to misplaced enthusiasm, something they’ve learned from since. Cameron Suey explains after the jump.
“Star Wars is one of the greatest licenses for a video game you could have and in the past we got a little excited about that and we put out games that probably weren’t up to the quality bar that we would have liked. That’s definitely something we’ve recognised and we understand. The more Star Wars games you put out and the more you love that environment the more it becomes mediocre and anodyne.”
(Unfortunately grammar then takes a blow at the claims, when Suey states, “You’re might see less and better. Make it right and do it right.” Fewer! “Less” would be where you’ve been going wrong for a while now.)
So why no Force Unleashed on PC, when it’s coming out on just about everything else, ever? Follow this:
“[The] PC being the gaming platform that it is, someone with a $4,000 high-end system would definitely be able to play the Euphoria, the DMM and really technical elements of the game. But someone with a low-end PC would have a watered down experience, they would have to turn all the settings down and it wouldn’t be the same game. On the other hand if we made that game for as many people as possible, because we are trying to make mass market games, something that everybody can enjoy, well then it’s not taking advantage of what those $4,000 systems can do. So one way or the other depending on how you build that lead PC SKU, it’s not going to be for the same amount of people, it’s going to be not as good or only for a select few people.”
Flubble. How exactly does that explain a PSP, PS2, DS, Wii and… N-Gage version? What a very peculiar answer. But the PC isn’t forgotten, Suey claims.
“That said we’re definitely not out of the PC market. It’s just with our choice for this game, with the known quantity for the consoles, and every console is the same with the same processing power, it made sense for us to develop for those consoles.”
That doesn’t sound too optimistic. So come on then LucasArts – money and mouths. Let’s see some completely new titles that have nothing to do with Star Wars. (And no, replacing them all with Indiana Jones doesn’t count). And put some of them on PC.
You can read the rest of the interview here. Thanks VideoGamer for all the nicked quotes.
12/05/2008 at 11:40 Jochen Scheisse says:
Paging Rev. Campbell, paging Rev. Campbell…
12/05/2008 at 11:40 propanol says:
The only LucasArts property I have any interest in whatsoever is KOTOR, which they’re turning into an MMO according to popular rumor (and that makes me sad – upcoming original Bioware/Obsidian properties look to have far less depth than KOTOR/KOTOR2).
12/05/2008 at 11:41 John Walker says:
Don’t page him!
12/05/2008 at 11:42 Cigol says:
Well, at least they didn’t blame piracy. It’s pity they had to pluck out the next best mythical excuse however.
12/05/2008 at 11:43 kalain says:
What a load of rubbish. This goes to show just how lazy developers are becoming towards the PC. They’ll make the game for consoles with less power then low end PC’s, then cite they cannot make the PC version because they want everyone to experience the same gameplay?
What a load of Bollocks. It seems, to me, that they are starting to put the PC platform, the one that got them to where they are today, to one side so they can concentrate on our inferior console cousins..
12/05/2008 at 11:44 Alex says:
I love that.
“We can’t do a PC version because most people don’t have $4000 systems and if we do a lower-scaled version the people with the $4000 systems will be disappointed, which would be really heartwrenching, utterly devastating, in fact! We have to show compassion, what with the Force ‘n all.”
In other words: “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE EXTREMELY HIGH END SYSTEMS?!?”
12/05/2008 at 11:56 John P (Katsumoto) says:
I have to fight with this hilarious contention every day over on Eurogamer. LOL YOU HAVE TO MORTGAGE YOUR HOUSE TO GET A TOP PC!
/opens latest pc gamer
/looks at first advert
/sees 2GB ram, Geforce 9600 GT 512, 7.1 surround sound, logitech kb/m, quad Q9300 processor.. £585. 500 quid if you just get a dual core.
Horror. Why do people INSIST on bandying this shite about??
12/05/2008 at 12:00 pauleyc says:
But someone with a low-end PC would have a watered down experience, they would have to turn all the settings down and it wouldn’t be the same game.
In the old times high-end PC games pulled the market forward. Wing Commander, Strike Commander, even the early CD-based games (Rebel Assault for instance) – all of them were reasons to upgrade PCs. True, modern consoles are more powerful than their counterparts from the 90s but building a capable gaming PC isn’t that expensive anymore.
LA apparently prefers the easy path of the dark side…
12/05/2008 at 12:02 Bobsy says:
They should talk to Blizzard about that. The $4000 figure is clearly utter bullpoop, but there is a tiny speck of a point in there. They’re approaching development from a console point of view – one system, one spec, one development, which PCs do not follow. One can assume that their current development model does not allow for time spent optimising code for variations in system spec, so therefore anything they made to this model WOULD require a $4000 machine.
Meanwhile, we’ll be playing World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2, which are carefully coded to suit a range of different system specs so that everyone can play them. Blizzard will be earning money from PC gamers, and Lucasarts won’t. It is, quite literally, their loss.
12/05/2008 at 12:03 Pavel says:
Damn, that pissed me off.Not that I care about Fart Unleashed (I would rather prefer sequel to Jedi Knight series), but 4000 bucks PC? Where the hell does he live, in the 94 ?
Nowadays you can get great PC for 500 bucks (if you are not an idiot), and considering what you spare on games (pc ones being a lot cheaper), his argument his full of SHIT.
Among other things.
12/05/2008 at 12:03 Lh'owon says:
And what’s with the “$4000″? I’m building a system with a high end video card (9800GTX), a more than adequate CPU (E8400 3GHz), 4Gigs of RAM, a very good PSU (620HX) for almost exactly NZ$2,500. And that’s a complete computer — monitor, speakers, case, everything. In New Zealand dollars.
Straw men sure do burn well, don’t they?
12/05/2008 at 12:05 derFeef says:
I knew it, the DS is more powerfull then a high end PC nowadays… Lazy they are, very simple – or couldnt they just say “Its because of the piracy” ?
12/05/2008 at 12:07 Jochen Scheisse says:
I think it’s just that producing games for high end PCs has proven to be a waste of producer’s money…like with Crysis.
I don’t think it’s just about the piracy. That’s a problem, because it’s so easy on the PC, but there are other reasons why the PC as the high end developing platform is being abandoned. One of the reasons is in this interview: Either you produce for a select few who want to pump 300-500€ into their PC every year or so, or you try to convince with content (haa haa!), or you develop for consoles.
12/05/2008 at 12:07 SwiftRanger says:
Well, let’s hope that The Force Unleashed turns out to be another Obi-Wan, that’ll teach them. The scaleability (“variance”) they mention isn’t an obstacle but rather the main strength of the whole PC platform and it has always been there. Of course it won’t look as good on every system out there but at least it’s playable and tweakable as hell; the highest system specs will have better visuals than consoles if it’s a proper PC title and once the lower-spec people upgrade, the game will get a new life for those people.
A proper Jedi Knight III would be welcome though…
12/05/2008 at 12:10 Rook says:
I’m pretty sure it’s just a dual core thing, and they don’t think enough people have them at the moment. Although Assassin’s Creed managed to do ok, and the min specs on that was Dual Core (although it would run on less).
12/05/2008 at 12:10 Taxman says:
They could have easily just ported the PS2 version which would have run even un-optimized well enough on most PC’s. Though whether PC gamers would be happy with that is another matter, I’m guessing Lucasarts probably thought no so why bother.
Lucasarts hasn’t really been too interested in the PC for a while now, after they got into difficulty a few years back & brought in Jim Ward who stabilized the ship by focusing on the consoles pretty much. The are starting to dabble again in the PC but they do ignore it for certain titles like Mercenaries, Fracture and probably the next Indy (not lego) are all console only.
12/05/2008 at 12:17 Butler` says:
As above, such ignorance from Lucas Arts. £500-600 gets you a very reasonable gaming machine (8800gt, C2D, 2gb ram).
12/05/2008 at 12:17 James G says:
I could swear that Force Unleashed was supposed to be comming to the PC. So much so that I was torn between getting it on the PC, with all those fancy physics effects, or on the Wii where I can pretend to wield a lightsaber.
As it is though it seems I would have needed a PC with more computing power than the human brain. (In terms of buying power $4,000 is probably worth a fair chunk more than £2,000 due to the higher price of electronic goods in Europe. I doubt I could build a +£2,000 system if I tried, save for buying all the comonenets at PC World or some other overpriced store, or decided to use an 120” plasma screen as a monitor.)
12/05/2008 at 12:23 John P (Katsumoto) says:
“I think it’s just that producing games for high end PCs has proven to be a waste of producer’s money…like with Crysis” – 1.5 million sold = waste of money? Damnit, they’re ambitious!
12/05/2008 at 12:30 rocketeer says:
What a load of bullshit. No wonder they fell from the sky long ago.
12/05/2008 at 12:31 Riotpoll says:
A $4000 PC is more than £2000 as stuff is cheaper in the US.
To spend that much you’d have to be running 2 9800GX2s in SLi. Which is a hell of a lot more power than the 360 and ps3 can put out graphics wise.
12/05/2008 at 12:31 Jochen Scheisse says:
Call of Duty 4 sold more than 1.5 million copies on the XBOX alone. That’s what developing for high end PCs does.
12/05/2008 at 12:42 DigitalSignalX says:
Load of crap, blame lazy developer syndrome. Then again, what do you expect from the folks who let KOTOR Sith lords ship with like 30% of the game cut off.
12/05/2008 at 12:48 Ging says:
I’ll forgive them if they do a version of Tie Fighter with new graphics…
12/05/2008 at 12:48 MeestaNob! says:
Bloody hell, 4000 anything these days would get you a machine that was near sentient.
Not a loss though, the Force Unleashed look pretty awful (concept wise).
12/05/2008 at 12:57 Theory says:
I bought a laptop which out-performs the 360 both theoretically and in real terms (and comes with a very un-laptop-like 17 inch LCD screen built in) for £850 two years ago. The model has been discontinued, but looking at what’s on offer today it’s hard to imagine it costing any more than £650. Get an equivalent self-built PC together where you aren’t paying a premium for manufacturer assembly or laptop miniaturisation and I’d guesstimate that that figure goes down by at least another £100 to £150.
How much does a 360 cost again (let’s not even start on the PS3)? And an HDTV? And the extra cost of console games? And the computer you own anyway?
12/05/2008 at 12:58 The_B says:
It does seem incredibly stupid. £2000 for a console capable machine? For example, my current set up hasn’t flinched at any of the 360 conversions or multiplatform games (I’m mainly thinking Gears, Pinata, even Assassin’s Creed) and that setup barely cost me £650…
(EDIT: I would have said this a lot earlier, but my internet went down and now I can see a lot of people have said very similar things. Ah well.)
12/05/2008 at 12:59 Ginger Yellow says:
“I think it’s just that producing games for high end PCs has proven to be a waste of producer’s money…like with Crysis.”
So make the engine scalable and don’t spend the year before release telling everyone who will listen that your engine is so amazing it will only run on super high end machines.
12/05/2008 at 13:07 Mawich says:
They don’t need to make any Indiana Jones games – LEGO Indiana Jones is out soon! Wheeeeeee!
12/05/2008 at 13:35 fluffy bunny says:
“The are starting to dabble again in the PC but they do ignore it for certain titles like Mercenaries, Fracture and probably the next Indy (not lego) are all console only.”
The next Mercenaries-game is coming out for the PC as well, though it doesn’t seem LucasArts has anything to do with it.
As for Fracture, it looks great. But it’s LucasArts we’re talking about here. I bet they’ll release it three months too early, when it works well enough, but lacks the final polish that would actually make it as great as it looks.
12/05/2008 at 13:38 mrrobsa says:
@James G
You’d be surprised how pricey you can make a PC if you try. I ‘built’ one on Dell’s website once for around £16,000 (I suppose it IS Dell) , I think it had 8 processors and 4 TBs of space, and this was a few years back.
Suffice to say I put in my mates contact details and clicked the stupid checkbox where they ask if the PC is to help develop/distrubute weapons of mass destruction.
12/05/2008 at 13:40 cliffski says:
What a bunch of tools. But frankly, fuck em. If they don’t want to make PC games any more, like epic, they can just go fuck themselevs. There willl still be plenty of people making PC-only games DESIGNED to take full advantage of everything the PC has (mouse/keyboard, modding, dual monitor etc).
This is great news for companies like stardock who make great PC-only games. And maybe good news for lil ol me making PC games too?
12/05/2008 at 13:47 Turin Turambar says:
Pretty funny comment, knowing how they have fallen, quality wise, since the left the pc development both in native studios and in licensed (like Jedi Outcast from Raven).
In fact, that was pretty much the last good Lucasarts game. Not done for them, and in computers. Coincidence?
12/05/2008 at 13:53 Kanakotka says:
HOOOONK, HOOOOONK, HOOOONK
That’s my bullshit detector going off on full alert. It’s keeping slightly less racket that it did with crytek not too long ago.
Want a PC system that’s more powerful than any console on the market today? $730 dollars. I’ll build you one myself, and it’s still profitable for me. Of course the catch is you provide audio and monitor, but hey, that’s the catch with consoles too, so…
Well, of course, unless you’re looking at ALIENWARE (HOOONK, HOOONK….) prices…
Soo… reading between the lines: “OUR GAME IS IN HD! BUY HD! HD!HD! COLORFUL RAZZLE DAZZLE OF VISUAL GLEE OVER GAMEPLAY AND ORIGINALITY! WE WILL MAKE SO MUCH MONEY!!!!” HOOONK…?
Chances of this conversation ending up someone blaming piracy? 99.7% cap’n!
12/05/2008 at 14:09 Rook says:
People really need to stop with the sour grapes over not getting PC versions. It makes you look like petulant children.
12/05/2008 at 14:12 John P (Katsumoto) says:
I think it’s more sour grapes over things like “$4000″ than the fact the PC isn’t getting it.
12/05/2008 at 14:17 subedii says:
Man I wish somebody had told Crytek they should have developed Cryengine 2 for a more powerful system like the PS2. It would have saved them buckets of money.
Realistically, the arguments were vapid a long time ago and we know they were. But there’s no sense in whining about it or making accusations at LucasArts “abandoning” the PC market. That’s their prerogative, and if they feel that it’s the option that makes the most financial sense, then they should do it (whether it actually does make the financial sense given the arguments and the context given is debatable, but that’s a separate issue).
If I’m honest though, I feel that they don’t believe the argument about the $4000 PC or that somehow the PS2 is more capable than the average WoW spec PC. The guys making this game know enough about the games market to at least know that. I would guess at the real reason lying elsewhere, possibly piracy, or just plain extra effort for less return (let’s face it, having to make the game scale for a large range of hardware configurations just isn’t as easy as programming to take maximum advantage of a set hardware configuration), but who knows.
In any case, the more I hear and see about Force Unleashed the less interested I’m becoming in it anyway. So I can’t really seem to muster any actual ire up on any of this. It’s not as if I haven’t got ENOUGH to play this summer as it is.
12/05/2008 at 15:09 Homunculus says:
This is generated by an executable file 180kb in size. I’m sure Lucasarts have sufficient talent base to make a scalable Force Unleashed for our beloved beige box if they really wanted to; it would appear that the will just isn’t there. Which, as Cliffski rightly points out, hopefully bodes well for those willing to fill the vacuum.
Me, I’m just pining for a really good Tie Fighter 2. There’s not been an exceptional space dog-fighting simulator since Freespace 2, which, thanks to continued development, is infinitely scalable from hardware that existed a decade ago right up to today’s beastliest of megabeasts.
12/05/2008 at 15:12 Dexton says:
PCs are for World of Warcraft, every other franchise makes more money on consoles.
That would have been a far more believable answer. Except you could build a PC for £200 that would play World Of Warcraft, rather than a £2000.
12/05/2008 at 15:13 subedii says:
Speaking of TIE fighter, gametrailers.com is doing a retrospective on Star Wars games. The latest episode is devoted solely to the X-Wing series of games, well worth looking up if you were ever interested in them. Good for a nostalgia kick.
12/05/2008 at 15:14 Steam Report says:
It is incredible that with all the platforms TFU is coming out on the PC isn’t one of them. It’s almost silly not to which probably means they are trying avoid piracy.
The internal argument probably went like “if you can pirate for free on PC you won’t be buying the console version”. Which we all know is horse shit. I had a feeling this is why Assassin’s Creed came out late and badly ported on PC.
12/05/2008 at 15:31 subedii says:
Badly ported? I though Assassins Creed actually had a lot of good work put into it, they even added in extra investigations and things.
12/05/2008 at 15:36 C0nt1nu1ty says:
horse manure to the comments on high end PCs.
I could throw together a PC that would give the PS3 a pretty good run for its money, do all my coursework on no crappy multiplayer restrictions and have 10X the hard drive space for…..oooh bout £600ish
But yes, give us more original content
Or alternatively dont if the smart funny orignal games department have been replaced by the star wars game chimps (yes i’m paraphrasing yatzi, get over it). even so I’d like to see what the “modern” lucas arts can do.
12/05/2008 at 15:41 jana says:
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http://www.gmlvl.com
12/05/2008 at 15:41 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Uh
12/05/2008 at 15:44 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Funny, at Star Wars Celebration Europe, I met the project lead(Hayden Blackman) of SWTFU (after he finished an interview) and asked him why they didn’t make it for the PC. Hayden’s answer was that the controls were designed for the Consoles, and that it would not play very well when playing the game with a keyboard and a mouse.
Two contradicting stories. I think they should just stop trying to justify it and make a good pc game.
12/05/2008 at 15:47 araczynski says:
oh for the love of god, $4000 computer needed to run 1280×720? (at BEST), they’ve been sitting too close to the exhaust fumes from their 360 i would say…
12/05/2008 at 15:56 Chaz says:
Yes you can get a good PC for £500 – £600 but that’s still twice the price of a 360 or PS3 and a lot more cash than a Wii. Yes the games are a bit pricier on a console, but not buy much at around £30-£40, and if you’re willing to wait a bit longer then you can usually get them for about £25 from Play Asia. At the end of the day when all’s said and done the console is the cheaper games machine, and it always has been. As a PC gamer, I’ve certainly never been under any illusions about its wallet emptying abilities. However I don’t think it really matters which format you prefer, as computer gaming here in the UK is a pretty expensive hobby which ever route you choose, and especially so if you choose both.
As for Lucas Arts using the cost of PC’s as an excuse not to release on that format, well that is certainly a real prize turd of an excuse. I would say it smacks more of the corporate bean counters shaking their collective heads rather than developer laziness though. Because lets face it if Lucas Arts were to do a PC conversion, the duties would probably get farmed out to a third party anyway.
12/05/2008 at 16:00 James T says:
Finally, my WoW gold needs are catered to!
…And I’ve ended a sentence with a preposition. Of course, that’s a very artificial rule, but it’s one I enjoy the challenge of keeping. Now, where was I? Oh yes.
$4000?! He’s talking out his arse! Glad I don’t give a hurtling shit about Star Wars.
12/05/2008 at 16:14 Nick says:
I love how a bunch of the companies who wouldn’t exist in the state they are now were it not for the PC are now turning their backs on what made them.
12/05/2008 at 16:45 cliffski says:
they do what makes the most money, and they probably do fear that pc piracy would cut into console sales, in cases where potential buyers had both systems.
But fuck em, console ports normally suck anyway. what we need are pc games, designed by pc game designers, for pc gamers. Not cast-offs from some low spec DVD player.
12/05/2008 at 16:48 Briosafreak says:
I had high hopes that they were announcing the end of all PC releases, not just one game.
I’m disappointed. It’s just LucasArts stopped being an interesting house on interactive media a decade ago or so.
I really wouldn’t miss their coming games on my favorite platform. Bah.
12/05/2008 at 16:50 Lunaran says:
> Load of crap, blame lazy developer syndrome.
Considering just how common knowledge the persistent and terrible crunch-mode in the games industry is, it astounds me that people can still say this with a straight face.
12/05/2008 at 17:35 fell says:
Is it really so hard to port the 360 version and the PS2 version? They have all the assets at both levels of quality, and they’re already set up for multiplatform development. Yeah, it’ll cost a bit more, but both pathways are so well established at this point that it should be routine.
But, besides that, it’s sad they’re talking (in a veiled way) about anything outside the 360/PS3 versions being weak and not optimal. This game belongs on Wii – isn’t that where everyone’s going to buy it?
12/05/2008 at 17:54 Ginger Yellow says:
My understanding is that the PS2, Wii and 360/PS3 versions are very different games, because of the physics/procedural animation system. The level design and gameplay mechanics are going to be very different. You could share some of the assets (textures etc), but that only gets you so far. If a low end PC can’t handle the physics, you can’t have physics based game design. You could do a lowest common denominator (ie port the PS2 version and include high res textures) but that would be a bit crap.
“This game belongs on Wii – isn’t that where everyone’s going to buy it?”
Assuming it’s good, I might be getting the Wii and the 360 version. You can’t resist the lightsaber-on-Wii aspect, sure, but the gameplay looks much more interesting on the more powerful consoles.
12/05/2008 at 18:28 theleif says:
Until they give LucasArts and all their assets to Tim Schafer and make a sequel to Grim Fandango they are like dead to me.
And, they have to promise not to make any more Star Wars games for a decade.
And fire Cameron Suey and replace him with someone that can tell more colourful lies. Or can he really be that ignorant of the PC game market? Well, any way he has to go. It’s him or me. Yep, now they’re really scared.
That’s all.
12/05/2008 at 19:01 Mr. Grizzly says:
Do they not realize PC gamers know better? Are you trying to tell me that the XBOX 360′s 2 year processor, ATI video and 512MB memory is better than my new Intel quad core, 4 gb memory, and 768MB 8800 GTX Ultra? (All in a PC that was less than $2K).
REALLY? You really gonna try that and expect PC gamers to buy that? You are going to turn your back on people who are the kind who are willing to spend more money on gaming than your average console owner? (I’m not knocking console owners).
Funny, the Crysis guys just made the argument that the consoles can’t handle their game as they don’t have enough power.
It’s clear that it’s easier to make a game for one or two fixed hardware platforms (consoles). That is what is really driving this decision. It would take longer and cost more to do a PC version, so why bother we’ll make a killing on the consoles. We can always bilk that market with a crappy port later.
So once again, a developer that got its name off of PC Gamers buying their products is now given the middle finger.
12/05/2008 at 19:13 Briosafreak says:
Yep, I’m with you on this.
12/05/2008 at 19:22 Jahkaivah says:
Talking about Tim Schafer, anyone know why Brutal Legends isn’t for the PC?
As for this argument: someone should take Lucasarts up to take with this, I wasn’t even that fussed until I heard this shoddy excuse.
12/05/2008 at 19:26 Shawn says:
what a bunch of azzholes Lucasarts is. A 4000 dollar PC? That’s insane. My 8800GT/Q6600 rig cost me 1000USD and it will wipe the floor with my 360/PS3. What a bunch of BS. I love how they claim the PS2 and Wii are ok to develop for even though they are no different than a low end PC.
Lucasarts didn’t say it but they don’t want to release on PC because they don’t want people to have free, easy, and convenient access to the game. If it were on PC, you would have a percentage of people that would download it instead of buying it. As minuscule as that number is, in this world of counting every penny and pleasing every shareholder, they probably bought into the idea of “PC is open therefore it’s bad”. There’s no other logical reason I can think of.
12/05/2008 at 19:42 sigma83 says:
Talk about forgetting your roots. That’s just sick.
12/05/2008 at 19:52 Myros says:
Been hearing these types of nonsense comments since I started building my own computers with the old 286. Never thought I’d be hearing them from someone inside the industry though, he should know better. Maybe just trying to rationalize bad choices or maybe he’s just an idiot ;p
Oh, and “Force Unleased” … seeing as your working on correcting others :)
12/05/2008 at 19:53 mrrobsa says:
@Homunculus:
Just wanted to say man that’s an incredible video you linked to. It was like a cross between the intro to GTA4 and the parade sequence from Ghibli film Pom Poko.
So its generated by an executable file 180kb, what else is required? Surely an engine and textures aren’t part of that 180kb?
12/05/2008 at 19:54 redrain85 says:
That’s the most transparent excuse about not doing a PC version of a game, that I’ve EVER heard. I’d expect that garbage to come from a PR or marketing monkey . . . but the game’s producer?
How quickly these companies forget their roots, and the customers that helped get them where they are. The Jedi Knight series started on the PC, and were some of the greatest titles ever released on the platform. Now we’re callously shoved aside.
12/05/2008 at 20:09 Wurzel says:
Though that excuse is nothing like good enough, I can see where they’re coming from, and that is that they are really developing two seperate games; one with physics-y goodness (which is a HUGE selling point for his game) for the 360 and the PS3, and one without for the PS2 and Wii. I’d imagine there’s very little in common between the two, other than textures and sounds.
Thus in order to port to PC they’d effectively have to port two different engines, while also selling it as a single game, communicating with the user about which to install, having to be very careful with their advertising, etc etc. I can see why Lucasarts would decide not to bother, especially as most of the big names in game development are claiming (however falsely) that piracy stops you from making any kind of profit on the PC anyway.
12/05/2008 at 20:23 Ghiest says:
He wanted a mass market game but doing an ngage version?
Seriously can you get any more bold face lies?
12/05/2008 at 20:24 RichPowers says:
What’s with the sense of entitlement? Why does LucasArts owe us a PC port?
Claiming gaming rigs cost $4000 is FUD; he should spare us from the bull and flat-out say “we only want to develop for closed platform” or “a PC port would not be profitable for us.”
And I agree with cliffski: more studios should treat the PC as its own platform and not as a recepticle for shoddy ports of months-old console games. Maybe that’s why they’re not releasing a PC version: it would be incompatible with the console design?
12/05/2008 at 20:36 Xaero says:
One of the worst game dev excuses EVER.
12/05/2008 at 21:05 alphaxion says:
something that I have been noticing for quite a while now is the prevalence amongst people at about the age of 13 to 18 is that in order to be called a hardcore PC gamer you need to have a £2000 or above PC.
Yes, gone are the days when hardcore gamers used to talk about their ingame achievements and how they took such a low spec’d machine, overclocked the tits off of it and got it to run the latest games.
The “new” hardcore gaming scene is entirely consumer driven rather than skill and knowledge based.
weep for the future na’toth… Oops, wrong theme ;)
12/05/2008 at 21:33 Kanakotka says:
Awww… no one picked up the fun Alienware flame there with me. It’s the only PC i know without professional quality 3D card that costs more than $2000. And the only PC where the case costs more than components. (it can’t all be air, right? RIGHT?!)
12/05/2008 at 21:58 alphaxion says:
I mentally filter alienware out, mate.
they were crap waaaaaay before dell bought them out.
13/05/2008 at 00:47 trunk3h says:
This is what they are really saying imo
“where not launching to PC right away / at all because we are concerned that we will lose sales from other platforms due the the avaliability of pirated PC copy”
This has nothing to do with the varation in pc systems capability. Its PR, as once you’ve made a sale on a title it doesnt matter how well it actually plays after that.
13/05/2008 at 03:22 Cibbuano says:
Ging says:
I’ll forgive them if they do a version of Tie Fighter with new graphics…
And I’ll forgive them if they do a Anakin-Padme Love Simulator (press ‘Q’ to say ‘I love you’, W to say ‘That’s because I’m so in love with you.’ and E to say ‘No, that’s because I’m so in love with you)
13/05/2008 at 06:37 Lavitz says:
I was really hoping someone would interview LucasArts about this and find out why there is no pc version and i was hoping they would have a good reason. Well they gave us there reason, i don’t know what to make of it. No point in saying WTF are you retarded so ill just let it be and hopefully i run into a LucasArts employee so i can give him a piece of mind in RL.
13/05/2008 at 12:05 Anach says:
That logic doesnt make sense. They are essentially saying that the lesser console players are used to their games performing up to a certain standard. So are lesser PC players generally.
$2000 gets most people a fairly good upgrade to their PC, unless they are buying a complete off the shelf package each time.
19/10/2008 at 18:13 fryer says:
someone said here that they are basically saying that the ds is more powerful than the pc. lmao. They shud just be honest and say it wudnt be cost efficient to produce the game for pc. Anyway why wud games like world of warcraft and warhammer be produced if there was no great market there? and the fact the people can play those games, yet cant play this game oh but the ds can? some retard at lucas arts needs the sack.
25/09/2009 at 14:47 Cliff says:
Right on Grizzly, you hit the nail on the head! We’re the ones that put Lucas Arts on the map in the first place and then they abandon us. They’re now coming out with some crappy port over and the way I see it, is that they can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. I have bought EVERY Star Wars game since the release of X-wing and I am sick of being shoved in the back of the line. I know that you did not want to knock Console gamers, but back in the day the console was known as the “poor man’s PC”. Yes things are different now, but it’s the PC gamer that is decicating thousand of dollars everytime we upgrade to a new system. So who is th real enthusist here? Someone that buys a console because they can’t afford to purchase the best hardware, or the PC gamer that tricks out his/her system for the very best graphics and smoothest possible framerate? A lot of people (like myself), take personal pride and dedicated not just the money, but the time it took to learn how to properly build their own systems from scratch. We are the ones that made these companies like Lucas Arts the Powerhouses they are today, not console gamers.
30/11/2009 at 14:52 Macq says:
The review scores did him justice for lying about everything. There is still karma.