By John Walker on July 4th, 2008 at 4:01 pm.
He clearly doesn’t, and that’s just the sort of reactionary nonsense he’s clearly hoping to avoid. But a recent post on his blog, regarding EA’s decision to stop making their Sports franchises for PC, isn’t quite as heartwarming as he might wish. It seems the reaction to EA Sports’ games becoming console only has been pretty vocal, so Moore has responded by laying out exactly why the PC is to be abandoned. So let’s take a look at his argument.
The PC as a platform for authentic, fully-licensed, simulation sports games has declined radically in the past three years as the next generation consoles, with their high definition graphics and 5.1 sound capabilities have attracted millions of consumers to eschew the “lean in” PC sports gaming experience for the “lean back” full room console experience.
I think there’s probably a great deal of truth to this “lean in/lean back” theory. Of course some of you will have your PCs hooked up to your 900″ plasmatronic in your home theatre, enjoyed from the comfort of your ergonomic massage-o-couch, but the vast majority of PC gamers are sat at some form of desk. However, it’s crucial to point out that as the sales have declined, so has the quality of EA Sports releases. For instance, the flagship Fifa series’ scores in PC Gamer UK:
Fifa 06 – 83%
Fifa 07 – 71%
Fifa 08 – 66%
NBA Live 03 on PC gets a Metascore of 80, while 08′s basketballer only reaches 67. NHL 2001 gets 90, but NHL 08 scores a weak 65. This has been a steady decline across most of the ranges, so it can’t be any wonder that sales have dropped too.
But the console versions are selling well, you may point out. Remarkably, NHL 08 has a Metascore twenty points higher on consoles. The PC ports, and they are so distinctly ports, are of a much poorer quality. It seems a stunning ommission in the argument to not acknowledge this.
The business model for PC games is evolving from packaged goods to a download model. The on-line experience is paramount, and hundreds of companies in this space are experimenting with direct-to-consumer revenue models, incorporating premium downloadable content, sponsored downloads, micro-transactions, subscriptions and massive tournament play.
This is unquestionably true. It is, in fact, the perfect response to those who proclaim PC sales are falling. “AT RETAIL!” you must reply, before pointing out not only the phenomenon of PC gaming figures online, but that these falling retail claims are a tad dubious. Thing is, Mr Moore, EA have an online store offering downloadable games, so it’s not the strongest reason.
Piracy is an issue. Sorry, I know many of you disagree with me on this, but the numbers don’t lie. Companies spend millions developing content, and deserve to see a return on investment for their risk. The employees developing the game design, writing code and creating art deserve to get paid for their work. Period.
It had to happen. It’s very disappointing to see the words “the numbers don’t lie,” without a link to any numbers. It’s not surprising either, as the numbers that do exist aren’t very convincing. (Well, they often are, but for the opposing argument).
I would also raise an extremely serious issue with “and deserve to see a return on investment for their risk.” No they absolutely do not! No one “deserves” anything of the sort. Companies that generate superb content with broad appeal you’d hope would see return. Companies that spend millions producing substandard products for a medium they treat dismissively deserve not to see a return. Business.
Also, conflating employee pay with return on investment is extremely disingenuous. Of course your employees deserve to be paid. However, if they produce substandard work not of a quality to see good sales, I’d suggest they should no longer be your employees. If employees are paid based on the sales of the product, rather than for their time creating them, then the products need to be really good. EA Sports’ games on PC haven’t been for a long time, and anyone agreeing to that contract is taking a serious risk of their own choosing.
Businesses have to make hard trade offs for where to invest for the best return, thus creating capital to make even more games. They have to take expensive risks in our hits and misses industry with new intellectual property to keep the games available to gamers fresh, innovative and pushing the technical boundaries of the hardware platforms. I know this concept touches a nerve with some of you, but our industry is founded on publishers that have driven for financially-successful games and then re-invested the proceeds in development of even more content for gamers to enjoy. It’s a simple financial premise, and an obligation for publically-traded companies who answer to their shareholders. We are not making games in garages or bedrooms any more.
A couple of years back, EA making an argument based on taking risks with new intellectual property would have had me cough out coffee I wasn’t even drinking. Things certainly have changed at EA in those regards, so he gets away with it. However, I’d go back to my point that were they to be making stunning PC sports games, it would be very interesting to see if the same logic applied.
In order to make fundamental shifts in an ecosystem, you sometimes have to hit the reset button. That’s what we have done this year at EA SPORTS as regards some of our franchises on the PC. That does not mean that we aren’t coming back next year with new, innovative, maybe even less-expensive ways to play all of our franchises on the PC, but for right now we are assessing all of the options open to us to shift the current paradigm for our games on this platform.
As soon as I hear something explained away as to do with “paradigm shifts”, I start hearing bird twittering noises. I think what he’s saying is, “We’re trying to think of a new way of approaching the PC market with our sports games.” And if he is, then great. I think EA need to do that very much. EA Sports need to start treating the PC with some dignity, rather than a last-minute thought once the consoles are taken care of. Downloadable, online-focused sporting games, at a decent price, would be a superb idea.
Are you a dedicated fan of EA Sports games on PC? Or were you, and what stopped you buying them? And most of all, how would you like to see EA approach the PC sporting market in the future?
04/07/2008 at 16:19 RiptoR says:
The PC ports, and they are so distinctly ports, are of a much poorer quality. It seems a stunning ommission in the argument to not acknowledge this.
So true.
Got both PC and Xbox360 versions of Fifa 08 and Tiger Woods 08 (and almost all other sports games that EA released in the 08 edition too, I love being a reviewer :p), and the PC versions are no where near the quality and polish of the console versions. This is probably due to the PC versions being ports of the PS2 games, but still.
Tiger Woods for example plays like a charm on the 360 and it looks extremely nice for a golf game, while the PC version is a pain to play and is a joke graphics wise.
I don’t think it’s a wonder the PC versions score so low compared to older iterations…
I used to buy each new Fifa game a couple of years back, but ever since PES reared it’s head on the PC, I’ve switched over to that. Simple reason being that the quality and gameplay is a lot better in PES.
04/07/2008 at 16:21 Nallen says:
Having clearly made the case that EA Sports’ products on the PC are terrible and don’t sell I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone upset about this. I couldn’t care less.
I have to say I’ve never played the EA Sports stuff based on the assertion they represent everything that’s wrong with the way EA used(?) to run their operations. The idea of actually paying money for Madden 58 or whatever makes me physically recoil.
In fact driving games aside the only sport related product from any publisher I know of people playing on the PC (let alone play myself) is Champ/Football manager.
04/07/2008 at 16:21 sigma83 says:
The fact that an input system has yet to be developed for the PC that is as good as the multi-gamepad split screen multiplay for sports games (which is part of the big deal, obv) is also a major stumbling block
04/07/2008 at 16:21 Dexton says:
Personally I have never liked sports games, however even I can see the difference between playing those games on your own in your room at your desk and with your mates in a living room.
Although I never really played I even enjoyed watching my old university housemates playing a highly competitive match of Fifa on the PS2. That is not to say that competitive sports games don’t have a future on the PC, but the future must be online and with rankings and offical tournaments.
04/07/2008 at 16:28 cyrenic says:
I’ve never thought sports games were that great a fit for PC. But the only time I ever play sports games is local multiplayer with friends, so I guess that makes sense :P.
04/07/2008 at 16:31 sigma83 says:
I seriously think they’re missing a HUGE market segment by not pushing the PC’s obviously superior online capabilities, but that’s corporate conglomeramania for you
04/07/2008 at 16:31 implain that says:
I don’t think it’s a question of living room vs study for everyone. Both my PC and consoles are hooked up to the same screen, and both have the same number of gamepads attached. Yet I still got FIFA on PS2, because I wanted something I could infallibly operate whilst pissed…
04/07/2008 at 16:41 Nero says:
I made fan pages for NHL 97-2002 with info and roster update downloads (some are still online this day) but I just got sick of it after that. I think NHL 08 was a port from the PS2 version and it promised the skill stick on the cover, but there was no real skill stick option like in the 360/PS3 versions. Also releasing a FIFA 2008 (or UEFA 2008 can’t remember) demo with no place to set any video options so it ran in like 640×480 some crap like that, and the only way to set options was to download a user created trainer that did this. Um, no wonder PC players doesn’t give a crap.
They have gotten my money in the past but until they begin (which is unlikely) to make the PC version the same as the best versions I won’t buy a EA Sports PC game again.
NHL 97 still rocks with it’s awesome music, not like these days with licensed garbage music.
04/07/2008 at 16:42 Paul Moloney says:
I suppose I should be upset in the spirit of Martin Niemöller’s poem (“When EA stopped publishing sports games, I remained silent and indeed snorted, for I think sports games sucketh majorly.”) and I’m _trying_ to work myself up into a frenzy of outrage, but I can’t. I wouldn’t play the best sports game in the world, never mind Midden’s American Braindamaged Morons Hitting Each Other June 2008 Edition. Admittedly, I did get 10 minutes of fun from Wii boxing, but that passed quickly.
But I suppose it’s not good if any company pulls out of a particular genre of PC games, for any reason. This will probably continue to happen as long as Microsoft considers PC gaming to be the Xbox 360′s nerdy deformed brother, a sort of Monster of Glamis type character not fit for refined company. I mean, what does Kevin Unangst actually _do_? The only difference I’ve seen Gaming for Windows making is to the top inch on the front of game cases.
P.
04/07/2008 at 16:43 Talorc says:
I haven’t played a sports game on my PC ever. I think the last vaguely sport related game I played was decathlon, california games or summer games on the C64. But I must admit that that it is pretty ballsy (in a good way) by Peter to post that on his blog.
Who knows, maybe he might even take on board some valid points, such as the crapness of the ports.
04/07/2008 at 16:51 Ross B says:
I think invoking Metacritic to show the quality of the PC ports was in poor-form, but I agree with your sentiments.
I’d like to see EA do a bunch of licensed 3D PC Downloadable games with micro transactions or ad supported and low system requirements, I think my soccer loving friends would enjoy that.
04/07/2008 at 16:51 Taxman says:
I’m honestly surprised anyone plays sports games on a PC these days at all. I wonder how much of the “criticism” is from people who are just PC fanboys and dont want to see EA stop supporting sports titles on the PC even though they dont actually buy the games to begin with.
As for numbers they did mention one off hand in industrygamer interview it was for madden and the last version sold 20 copies on the PS2 alone for every 1 copy sold on the PC, not good numbers so I can see why EA wouldn’t want to bother with a low volume product.
04/07/2008 at 16:55 Stuart W says:
I used to buy every annual instalment of Fifa until about 4 years ago when i switched to PES. I still played a demo of every Fifa incarnation since, comparing it with Konami’s effort, but always sided with the latter and thus always purchased it.
It was just a quality thing for me – i bought the best football title that was available and in recent years that wasn’t an EA product. It’s a shame that EA react to that by pulling out of the market.
04/07/2008 at 17:00 Paul says:
I bought Fifa 98(my first EA sports game) which was a great game. Years later i bought Fifa 2005 and it was total crap.
After the 05 disapointment i got pro evo 6 and have never looked back since.
I think EA should approach the PC sporting market with innovative ideas instead of slightly tweaking gameplay and graphics each year. Giving their develepors a longer deadline instead of bringing a new edition every 12 months would definately improve the quality of their sports games.
04/07/2008 at 17:02 Andrew Stomps says:
meh, EA sucks anyways
04/07/2008 at 17:02 Frank says:
Doesn’t bother me. The last realistic sports game I played was EPYX World Games. Maybe they’re missing a business op, but…meh.
04/07/2008 at 17:04 Meat Circus says:
PC GAMER KILLED PC GAMING.
Um.
04/07/2008 at 17:04 Po0py says:
PC version of Fifa 08 was not the Fifa 08 that they were marketing. It did not have any of the new next-gen features that the 360 version had and many people purchased it thinking it was finally going to rock on the pc. Obviously they didn’t read the small print.
You need to test some quality fifa games out on the pc before you can dismiss it as a viable platform for your games.
Cowards.
04/07/2008 at 17:05 Paul Moloney says:
I must admit, the idea of paying full price every single year for virtually the same game strikes me as weird. The strange thing to me is not that EA is pulling out of the PC sports game market, but how they ever manage to conjure up such a gold mine in the first place.
I mean, I love Oblivion, but I can’t imagine buying a new version every year (“Oblivion 2008 – now with extra helmets”).
P.
04/07/2008 at 17:06 Legandir says:
“Are you a dedicated fan of EA Sports games on PC? Or were you, and what stopped you buying them? And most of all, how would you like to see EA approach the PC sporting market in the future?”
First, they need to come up with a control scheme that takes advantage of the pc’s controls rather than bypass it by practically forcing people to use gamepads. Keyboard and mouse control is one of the pc’s greatest assets and if they put some thought into it im sure they could come up with a great control scheme.
I have a control scheme in my head for a football game that i fully intend to make. It won’t be licensed and it probably won’t be pretty, but i’m confident that the control scheme is at least as good and maybe even better than the usual gamepad
04/07/2008 at 17:06 Meat Circus says:
So, PC gaming is changing. Yes. Is it for the better or the worse?
If you’re Epic, and nobody wants to play your braindead homoeroticism outside a 360- bad.
If you’re EA Sports and are worried that PC gamers are too smart to fall for your “same old game with new rosters” trick: bad.
If you’re everybody else: ACE.
04/07/2008 at 17:07 Radiant says:
Nearly every thing Moore says is sprinkled with a nasty dose of spitefulness.
Either for his subject matter or towards the person that he is talking to.
Dumping the sports line for the pc is probably the smart thing to do but he didn’t have to get thousands of people’s backs up in the process.
Seems like a bit of a wanker.
04/07/2008 at 17:08 Ian says:
I’d be interested to see a PC footy game try out a system like Pro Evo has on the Wii, which is arguably the best of the ’08 crop of footsoccer games.
04/07/2008 at 17:16 Kanakotka says:
Someone is still actually buying Fifa 2008, revision 21 or NHL 2008 revision 24982479 ? They started to get old at -96 already. I see this as huge loss for the PC industry as losing the next release of Big Fish Games or some other garbage pump.
04/07/2008 at 17:21 cullnean says:
to my mmo loving self it makes no odds anyhoo, i mean apart from mangement sims who buys/uses a pc for sports games?
04/07/2008 at 17:27 Radiant says:
@Legendir have you played PES on the wii?
The way they re-jigged the entire game for the controls was awesome.
The main issue with wasd and mouse controls for sports games on the pc is that the keyboard is actually a really clumsy piece of kit when compared to the simplicity of an analogue thumbstick or even a d pad.
With our casual games [I don't work for EA] we see a huge drop off of repeat play when we use wasd controls compared to when we just use a mouse.
The current thinking is that its because of the increased complexity.
/We’re/ used to it but everyone else is not.
04/07/2008 at 17:28 Flubb says:
diningenuous? :)
04/07/2008 at 17:31 Pepito says:
The only experience I have with sports games on PC (besides Hyperblade) is an in-class tournament we had in primary school on some crappy old 2D soccer game for Macintosh. I made it to the final round but lost to the principal’s son because he was allowed to use the keyboard and I had to use the mouse. Bitterness ensued.
Anyway, when I hear “less-expensive” in regards to online games, I hear “casual.” Not that sports games can get much more casual… or maybe I’m just underestimating EA. Yeah, I’m gonna go for the latter.
04/07/2008 at 17:31 John Walker says:
Good grief, I must have read through this piece 30 times, and didn’t spot that.
04/07/2008 at 17:33 Sean Ridgeley says:
Excellent story man. I was going to write something on it for one of the sites I write for but I think you covered it all. :)
04/07/2008 at 17:35 James T says:
It’s a conglomeramaniarama! I’d be interested to know what a conglomeramaniaramologist would make of this.
04/07/2008 at 17:39 Legandir says:
@Radiant: I haven’t played PES on the wii but i’ve heard about its controls, they sound interesting and slightly similar to mine. Not quite the same but close. I would love to play it to see what they’re like but i cant afford it :(
04/07/2008 at 17:39 MetalCircus says:
Oh my gooooood, no more sports games. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO!?
04/07/2008 at 17:41 James G says:
I’m not surprised frankly. I don’t tend to play sports games myself, but have plenty of friends who do. And all of them play them in groups, slouched down on the sofa, and often with beer around. While as others have pointed out there is absolutely nothing that stops you doing this with a PC, it is an environment to which the console is better adapted. In the case of my brothers their gaming is almost exclusively confined to Pro Evo (on the 360) and Football Manager on the PC.
04/07/2008 at 17:59 c-Row says:
Participate in real sports for a change, maybe? Oh no, wait, SC2 and D3 are just around the corner…
04/07/2008 at 18:07 restricted3 says:
Peter Moore is an idiot, so I kind of don’t mind whatever he says.
All the EA Sports game have been shit for a long time, anyway. FIFA Football 2008 (yeah, Football, not Soccer) is FIFA 2001 with prettier graphics… as are FIFA 2007, FIFA 2006, FIFA 2005… well, you get my meaning.
EA doesn’t deserve to sell shit on any of their sport franchises. And if Peter Moore can’t acknowledge any of this and instead blames piracy like every other shitty developer that doesn’t sell as much as he wanted (I won’t even say ‘expected’ anymore), he’s only making it harder for me to buy his next game.
I hate to give money to whiners. Specially if their games are not good and/or I played the exact same game 8 years ago, with less polygons and no bloom.
04/07/2008 at 18:10 Okami says:
I don’t like Peter Moore, so I guess it’s kinda ok. Hearing about all the money he got for moving to EA reminded me why I’m still a communist at heart..
04/07/2008 at 18:15 Yhancik says:
Would you play Stalker in a couch ?
NO WAI !
I’m a deskcore player
04/07/2008 at 18:16 Rodafowa says:
As for numbers they did mention one off hand in industrygamer interview it was for madden and the last version sold 20 copies on the PS2 alone for every 1 copy sold on the PC, not good numbers so I can see why EA wouldn’t want to bother with a low volume product
It was alluded to in the article, but as a wise man once said – you’re gonna reap just what you sow.
The PC ports of Madden has been at least a generation behind the corresponding console versions for… oooh, ever. I’ve been playing them since Madden 2004 in the main because I don’t want to take up the family TV for the hours it takes to play through a Madden franchise, and aspects of the game have been borderline-broken all that time.
Given that it’s hardly a game series that’s renowned for its innovation, it’s particularly galling that issues like any controller button remaps not working in the Practice or Superstar modes kept recurring year after year. And the PC port of the game only got working Jumbotrons in the stadia with its last iteration, despite them being in the console games since the first PS2 version.
Honestly, is it any surprise that anyone with the option would choose to play the game on a console? “Piracy is an issue” my enormous hairy ARSE.
04/07/2008 at 18:16 Paul Moloney says:
Maybe we can get Ian Paisley to go spank his ass:
http://kotaku.com/5022173/ea-sports-very-sorry-for-irish-anthem-screw+up
P.
04/07/2008 at 18:19 Dolphan says:
I don’t understand the justification for the PC version of Fifa 08 being a port of the far inferior PS2 version. The 360 version is excellent, by far the best football game I’ve played, having skipped 07 which is apparently where the major improvements came in. Why not port that?
04/07/2008 at 18:27 Ginger Yellow says:
“I’d be interested to see a PC footy game try out a system like Pro Evo has on the Wii, which is arguably the best of the ‘08 crop of footsoccer games.”
It’s not even arguable. It’s the best footy game I’ve played in years. It would be awesome on the PC with proper graphics, good online and mouse control.
04/07/2008 at 18:28 implain that says:
Dolphan – system requirements. Still, it’s a shame they don’t use the PS2 graphics engine and 360 game code, since most PCs these days have a 360-level CPU and PS2-level graphics card. But of course that would be tricky and probably require lots of work to get the animations right.
Also, people who don’t like sports games – try Virtua Tennis, it’s brilliant.
04/07/2008 at 18:29 Commando says:
Don’t know how there can be any moaning about keyboard and mouse controls when the Xbox 360 wired controller works like a dream. Yes it’s an accessory you have to buy but it works great for quite a lot of games, like Trackmania!
04/07/2008 at 18:46 Meat Circus says:
I’m just laughing at c-Row, who thinks that Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are ‘just around the corner’. Chortle.
04/07/2008 at 18:58 dan^ says:
What we really need is for someone to release a decent update of Sensible World of Soccer. (And not, for instance, the pile o’ cack that was Sensible Soccer 2006.)
04/07/2008 at 19:03 theapologist says:
Quality is clearly massively important, and isn’t online the other big deal here they are ignoring?
This sounds like a division of a big company that doesn’t want to think differently, as it knows what it’s doing with console actiony games.
That’s also why Football Manager Live will be hugely popular and Sports Interactive will make tonnes of cash from it, while FIFA disappears and no-one cares.
04/07/2008 at 19:04 Optimaximal says:
As much as I hate giving MS more money, you can happily plug 4 Xbox 360 pads into a PC these days…
04/07/2008 at 19:07 RichPowers says:
We’re all puzzled by the revelation that some people actually play sports games on the PC. The next step is to find said people and terminate them.
04/07/2008 at 19:19 Nick says:
Oh.. dear god.. no more EA sports games of ever decreasing quality.. what ever shall we do?
How will we live without a yearly update of the same game barely changing anything?
Still, all that hard work and innovation and risk (!) certainly deserves to turn a profit.
04/07/2008 at 19:20 Wayne M says:
Regarding the Football side of EA’s Franchise obsessed ideology, it doesn’t even compare to Pro Evo in my opinion.
It is just an over-inflated bling fest that focuses too much on the style and absolutely nothing on the substance that Pc Gamers absorb with relish. Pro Evo allows the player to create sublime goals based on the players skill level rather than the scripted partially controlled goals that FIFA offers up. Pro Evo allows freedom to create, and EA need to focus on the most progressive and cutting edge format available…The PC. to move the Football Franchise forward..We deserve better!!
04/07/2008 at 19:24 Myros says:
Like others here I’d just have to say … good riddance. It would be different if we were losing some quality franchise but EA Sports has been crap for years. The way they were making the PC versions was lazy and seemed to me they didnt really care if they sold or not. Guess I was right about that.
I just hope that the suits who do the sports license deals now realize that competition is a good thing and allow other companies to have a go in the PC market. Sure is nice of EA to manipulate their way into a monopoly only to kill of the market. Somebody should sue em ;p
Myros
04/07/2008 at 19:34 Erlam says:
You know you instantly failed at your half-assed defense when you manage to use both piracy and PC’s movement to downloadable content to defend your awful games on the PC alone.
.. especially because Consoles are also moving to downloadable content. Look at Rock Band, or Guitar Hero.
Then you have piracy. It’s funny that companies that bombed on the PC immediately blame Piracy, yet companies like Blizzard or Valve or raking in the dough. I wonder why.. average Blizzard game rates 90 , same for Valve… EA games rate 60… hmm. Piracy is easily avoided — make a product people are willing to buy, that requires your actually functional online system to use, done.
Also one can easily surmise that publishers like EA hate the PC because they can’t push the same shitty games on it that they could on a console. Say you’re a PS3 owner – you need to justify that purchase with games. If the only thing out is some 66% reviewed game from EA, you really have no other choice. On a PC, however, you have not only new games, but a massive backlog of games going back 5, 10, 15 years. Imagine if Halo had been a PC exclusive. It would have bombed against something like Counter-Strike, or even Quake 3 likely.
04/07/2008 at 20:21 BonSequitur says:
Eh, the Winning Eleven games were so much better than Fifa 200-whatever, and no other sports matter, ever. EA’s monopoly on the names of football players is a drag, though.
04/07/2008 at 20:29 Ian says:
Winning Eleven games were consistently better than FIFA, but the last PS3/360 incarnation is an awful, awful game.
04/07/2008 at 20:33 Dinger says:
If anyone can break the EA monopoly on sports, it’s Peter Moore.
Still, if they want to “retool,” good on ‘em. How about using those player franchises to make the teams change in performance from week to week? Maybe using weather metrics to recreate stadium conditions? There’s all kinds of cool stuff to do.
04/07/2008 at 20:51 BonSequitur says:
Personally I’d like to see a cartoonish and exaggerated implementation of football, a la Battlefield Heroes. But that doesn’t leverage the licensing power, so EA won’t be the one to do it.
04/07/2008 at 20:58 Dot says:
To be honest I didn’t even know those sports game franchises actually HAD PC VERSIONS until they discontinued them, and I’m pretty much a PC-only gamer, so it all just doesn’t really matter to me.
04/07/2008 at 21:02 Robin says:
Oh Peter Moore, is there anything your insincere chumminess and cheesy buzzwords can’t fix?
EA’s monopolisation of sports games has had the inevitable disasterous effect on their quality, and it’s only the fact that sports gamers are undiscerning and have so few other options that has held off a total sales collapse so far. Moore doesn’t even acknowledge that there’s a problem. Just like he didn’t acknowledge there was a problem with the 360′s reliability until shortly before he ‘voluntarily’ (snort) left Microsoft.
04/07/2008 at 21:25 Kareem says:
Man, I couldn’t disagree more about quality when it comes to recent EA Sports titles, at least in terms of the FIFA games. FIFA 08 was one of their best outings to date IMO. I’ll be sad to see that go from the PC since FIFA 08 became one of my favorites when stacked up against the recent PES games which feel tired and sterile, even to me, a former PES fan.
04/07/2008 at 21:47 MustardMan says:
I know this is a British website, but one of the worst parts of this decision involves American football:
EA Sports holds the exclusive license to the NFL for several more years, which means that there will be NO NFL-licensed games for the PC in the foreseeable future. Too bad no other company can jump into EA’s void, at least not in the case of Madden!
04/07/2008 at 22:26 John Walker says:
I put a pic of Madden in there especially : )
Now, if EA made a baseball game worth noticing, you’d get me really cross about this.
04/07/2008 at 23:30 Alex McLarty says:
I forgot about Moore when he started talking about profit lines and brands. No way to bring about games.
04/07/2008 at 23:52 UncleLou says:
I’ll blame myself, the last EA sports game I’ve bought must have been on the Amiga.
05/07/2008 at 00:09 Dolphan says:
System requirements? Hmph. I guess most of their target audience don’t have much in the way of graphics cards, but it’s not that graphically impressive – I may be being ignorant here, but a bit of scaleability (resolutions, some lower-quality textures, fewer frames of animation) doesn’t seem a massive ask.
“Personally I’d like to see a cartoonish and exaggerated implementation of football, a la Battlefield Heroes. But that doesn’t leverage the licensing power, so EA won’t be the one to do it.”
Exists on consoles – the Fifa Street series. They’re only passable though.
05/07/2008 at 00:10 Anonymous says:
I myself already pirated stuff in the past, and know a lot of people who still get pirated copies of games. I lately have been trying to force myself to buy games, but that’s a change of culture I don’t see happening to everyone else, so it is true, even though he doesn’t put his numbers, that piracy is a big issue. At least from my point of view.
05/07/2008 at 00:33 Kadayi says:
Isn’t it about time that EA gave up trying to vaguely compete in the DD arena and threw their lot in with Steam? I’m sure they could wangle a good deal with Valve in terms of pricing.
Can’t say I care what Moore has to say, he looks like a constipated weasel and talks like one as well. The 360 is already past it’s sell by date as a piece of gaming technology and it’s only lasting legacy will be as a device that ultimately hamstrings current AAA game development due to a complete failure by the hardware manufacturers to commit fully to either a next generation HD Storage format, and a lack of guaranteed hard drive space simply in order to ship a mass of budget units no one but the ill informed and desperate wanted at launch. Sure they got out of the blocks before the PS3, which looks good to the shareholders, but there’s no benefit in there for either Gamers or developers in terms of long term product development.
05/07/2008 at 00:42 devlocke says:
The only EA Sports game in my house is a copy of Madden 2003 for the PS2. It plays Andrew WK whenever we cut it on, so my room mate has no interest in buying a newer copy of the game.
Like somebody mentioned a few posts ago, I didn’t even know they released all their sports games on the PC. I probably wouldn’t have bought any if I did, but still, it’s kinda sad that the effort put into marketing the games was so small I could read gaming sites on a daily basis for years and have no idea they existed.
05/07/2008 at 01:05 Mo says:
I don’t understand why everybody gets so pissed about the yearly updates. Buy this years version, and never buy another copy after that. Nobody is freaking forcing you to go out and buy a copy every year! I bought FIFA 1998, and then FIFA 2002. Ignored the versions in between. Problem solved!
05/07/2008 at 01:05 Bread says:
A few points.
- EA is no longer the sinister behemoth milking franchises for everything they could ever produce. That role is now taken by Activision. To fall back on lazy, outdated stereotypes isn’t a good argument. EA’s sport franchises do (generally speaking) change and improve with each iteration. The latest FIFA 2008, for example, is superior to the remarkably broken Pro Evo 2008. Sorry to smash your firmly held fictional beliefs, but the “EA adds a number to the end lol” argument doesn’t carry the weight that it used to.
- Sports games are, by their very nature, mass-market titles that naturally gravitate to mass-market platforms, and that isn’t the PC any more – as demonstrated by the number of commenters saying they don’t know/care about PC sports titles. You’re getting worked up about the lack of titles that you admit you wouldn’t play?
- The point of Moore’s post, broadly speaking, is to say that EA doesn’t rush to release sports games on PC because of piracy (which is true, for the record – I note that nobody bitching at his “lack of numbers” has numbers of their own to prove otherwise) and that EA will address this by coming up with new PC-focused titles. Given that this is the company putting out Battlefield Heroes and other interesting, PC-only titles this would seem like a good thing. And yet you all think this is a bad thing? I thought this was a site that was supposed to cherish the PC’s unique qualities?
Jesus. A major developer states it wants to make decent PC-focused titles and all you can do is bitch about the fact it won’t release shonky ports of games you won’t buy anyway. Grow up and stop being your own worst enemies.
05/07/2008 at 01:09 implain this says:
Yeah, you’d think they could scale it down quite far, but lots of devs have tried and 360 ports generally tend to require at least a GF6600, and run badly on one of those at that (I had one). Shader support is an issue, they can’t just drop some frames. Whereas FIFA 08 runs on pretty much anything, 1.3 Ghz CPU with 256 RAM (that’s system not graphics card) and GPUs down to intel 915. Well suited to people who don’t upgrade or want to play on a laptop, i.e. the wider PC games Sims/Peggle market.
05/07/2008 at 01:11 caesarbear says:
How about a decent PC-focused title that’s a sports game? I’d kill for a good baseball sim, not the arcade crap. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a good PC focused strategy player’s NFL sim? Too bad EA has the exclusive rights and has abandoned any attempt at PC sports title entirely.
05/07/2008 at 01:13 Mo says:
Also Kadayi, your thoughts on the Xbox360 are hilariously off the mark.
Going for an HD format is a terrible idea. Why go for an unproven, expensive, slower technology (HD-DVD/BluRay) when the current technology works great? Also, it doesn’t offer significant benefits. The extra space on an HD-disc is essentially wasted, because while you can store super-hi-rez textures, present day video cards (and video RAM) wouldn’t be able to support them. Sound can be stored uncompressed, but the monster CPUs we’ve got can effortlessly decompress sound. The only thing more disc space is useful for is making games longer, which is a trend the industry is moving away from.
Shame about the HDDs though, I’ll give you that.
05/07/2008 at 01:42 John Walker says:
Bread – If you would like to discuss the content of the post, please could you do two things. Firstly, argue with what’s written in the post, and not in your imagination (I think the bit where I point out EA no longer can be mocked for not creating new IP would somewhat squash one of your accusations). Secondly, could you please behave with a shred of manners? At this point I see no reason to address your mostly fictional claims.
However, you raise a point I want to make:
I do not want, on any level, this to become another piracy thread (to the point where I’ll likely delete comments that try to make it become one). But let me briefly make this statement:
It is not my job to disprove the claims made by others. It is their job to prove their claims when they make them. Thus Moore, and indeed you, need to offer some numbers to show the effect piracy has had on the sales of EA Sports games before such a claim can be made. Until that time, I will assume it is unproven.
05/07/2008 at 02:04 MeestaNob! says:
It’s hard to know even where to begin, especially as my thoughts have been expressed far better here already, but I’ll just whack a few of them down in point form to join the other Angry Internet Men:
- I don’t think EA stopping making sports games (quite frankly any games) for the PC is a terribly bad thing. The vast majority of their stuff is very poor, and the rest of any real quality is made by external developers or once-brilliant studios that EA have OMNOMNOMed into oblivion.
- EA in the past near decade have shown an increasing disdain not just for PC users but gamers in general. They make games not to fill a gaming niche for someone out there, but to fill a space on the store shelf and strip punters of their money. The attention to details is obviously not there in the games they release, because they know that it doesn’t matter cause a new version will be out in 12 months, and even then they’re not concerned if the issues are corrected because, “Hey, we’ve now just guaranteed the sale of 2 copies of the same game now!”
- Generally patches and updates for their games are to stop the absolute worst game stopping bugs and utter clusterfucks that have occurred and not picked up in testing, or were but were deemed ‘inconvenient’ in regards to an approaching release date. Whilst most developers will issue patches to make things work better EA will only be interested to the point where something works. It’s basically a method they use to stop them getting sued, not to improve the gamers experience overall.
For instance, if Valve made garden tools, they’d sell a wheelbarrow and then after listening to users issues ‘patch’ it so the handles were easier to hold and more ergonomic; EA would wait 6 months for sales to drop off then release a patch that stopped the tyre being fucking square in 95% of reported cases during normal use.
- For a truly massive company, EA’s misunderstanding and unwillingness to embrace the online component of not only the PC but even consoles is depressing. Console games by and large are still a chore to use, and instead of incorporating the benefits of PC style systems they instead choose to inflict the console drawbacks on the better system.
- Their approach to DRM of late is legendary in its almost cruel mistreatment of the casual gamer. No one I know is buying Mass Effect on PC until a version is released on PC that doesn’t cripple itself on a whim. They and other companies complain about piracy yet practically drive you to Uncle Torrence house in frustration.
Piracy IS WRONG, but these companies bring it on themselves and need a reality check. Gaming IS a business for these companies, yes, but many of them are candidates for You’re Doing It Wrong awards. Treat gamers fairly and reap the rewards; hell, just go chat to Valve and Stardock on how to make wheelbarrows full of money. That work.
- EA have gone on a bit of a PR frenzy trying to portray themselves as a friend of gaming, by becoming more ‘hard core’ and “Hey, we’re gamers too. Really” style news fluff pieces, but the reality is most gamers aren’t convinced, and probably will never be. They’ve taken the communuity for granted for ages now and have never shown any interest in even defending themselves until recently. There’s a small chance some within the organisation actually see the dangers on the horizon to them with the way of doing things, but I fear (and hope, to be honest) that it’s too late for them. As dramatic as it sounds, EA need to suffer the way they’ve been making gamers suffer, and I for one DONT CARE about their games anymore. I don’t buy them, I don’t obtain them through illegitimate means, I just don’t play them. Gamer Over EA, you’ve had your chance, but I’m letting other companies fulfill have a go at entertaining me. You can buy up and destroy all the developers you like but it wont stop me playing something else.
Frankly I have lots of ideas on how they could turn things around but I’ll just keep them to myself, they can get fucked frankly. This isn’t irrational EA hatred, its well founded anger.
So any way, just some random thoughts, mostly not very well expressed but hopefully of some worth to the conversation.
05/07/2008 at 02:09 Stu says:
WOAH WOAH WOAH!
Tell me you didn’t just make a direct link between the quality of a game and its sales, because I think Tim Schafer and Michel Ancel might have a little something to say about that.
05/07/2008 at 02:10 cqdemal says:
There is evidence that EA is trying something new with PC sports titles though. FIFA 09 PC will at least sport visuals approaching (or maybe exactly the same, I don’t know) as its PS3 and 360 equivalents.
05/07/2008 at 02:27 The Hammer says:
@Stu
I think there is a difference between niche genres selling badly, and games of a more popular type.
For example, whilst FIFA in the 90s was often see as being the primary football series, a lot of people saw it as being the same simple trash being spewed out yearly. The emergence of Pro Evolution Soccer, with its limited official content and woeful commentary was still able to give FIFA a run for its money, and one year I think it even beat FIFA in sales. This was mostly due to reviews, word-of-mouth, and FIFA hardly changing year in, year out.
05/07/2008 at 02:42 sigma83 says:
‘Tell me you didn’t just make a direct link between the quality of a game and its sales, because I think Tim Schafer and Michel Ancel might have a little something to say about that.’
So fucking true.
05/07/2008 at 03:05 John Walker says:
Stu – as the quote you used shows, no, of course I did not!
If you make *substandard work not of a quality to see good sales*. Not, “If the sales are poor.” In my defence, I didn’t exactly put it ambiguously.
05/07/2008 at 04:13 CK says:
Boo hoo hoo,
EA can go smell my cheese for all i care that they’re not going to ‘grace’ the market with the DS port of FIFA 45.
In the last year one of my friends bought FIFA07, FIFA08 and Euro08; when you’ve created a race of [no thank you - Ed] willing to do that, its no wonder they’re turning their backs on us.
I think the main issue for them is that they’re having a little strop that PC gamers aren’t yet braindead and therefore wont just buy up whatever turd served up to them, even if it does have a bigger number on the name.
05/07/2008 at 05:07 josh g. says:
Yeah, what happened to the 08 PC games, anyway?
…
http://www.hb-studios.com/
05/07/2008 at 05:07 Frank says:
Yes
05/07/2008 at 05:10 josh g. says:
Also, geez, I don’t think EA’s mistake was that they were too unwilling to fire employees. Think about that for half a second, please.
05/07/2008 at 06:51 Winterborn says:
While this sucks at least most of you get to play the sports you love in decent quality on pc(till now) and consoles. Being Australian and spending about as much time thinking about AFL Football as I do PC Gaming the ability to combine the two would be awesome.
I mean, I even played Football Manager for months despite not having a clue about the game it simulated – a manager of Australian Rules football would take over my life.
05/07/2008 at 10:01 rotated8 says:
I think Petey’s got one (other) bit of info backwards. Some companies are “experimenting” with direct-to-consumer business models? Nonono, some companies LIVE on direct-to-consumer business models. Valve .
05/07/2008 at 10:19 Kadayi says:
“Also Kadayi, your thoughts on the Xbox360 are hilariously off the mark.”
Much like observing a lady exiting a car, you either see it or you don’t, and quite clearly you don’t.
Your arguments are to quote your own words ‘hilariously off the mark ‘ in being both short term and narrow minded. What is sufficient for todays gaming needs in terms of optical disc storage isn’t necessarily going to be sufficient tomorrow or in 2 – 3 years time, and by limiting the 360 to DVD instead of committing fully to HD-DVD they did developers no favours in the long term when producing for the 360. Certainly it can be argued that certain games styles (FPS) are getting shorter than their predecessors in terms of play length, but they certainly aren’t getting smaller in terms of actual GB size (even now games are being released that straddle multiple DVDs). With 8 million HD-DVD players out the door a year before PS3 and affordable Blu-ray players were available, the format war might of played out very differently (the film studios committed on market place, not technical aspects ultimately) , plus it’s not like an HD-DVD drive can’t read a DVD data disc if a game is sufficiently small enough to fit on one (no extra cost to developers unless they choose to go that way). For the sake of a initially reduced price point Microsoft committed to a console configuration that has no real long term aspirations compared to it’s main rival, give it another year or 2 and Microsoft will be announcing it’s replacement.
05/07/2008 at 11:48 Robin says:
@Mo:
“The only thing more disc space is useful for is making games longer, which is a trend the industry is moving away from.”
Veering off topic, but that’s completely wrong. Modern GPUs and memory architectures can slurp up data on a vastly larger scale than the PS2. Not only does more storage (whether that’s in the form of a BluRay disc or a big fat HDD) let you have richer environments, but it means developers aren’t having to waste their time trying to squeeze things onto one disc (or not bothering and subjecting players to disc swapping, which should have gone out with the Amiga).
Microsoft took a gamble by rushing out the 360 without a convincing storage solution. While it has worked out ok for them so far, PC and PS3-native games aren’t hampered by this constraint and absolutely *do* benefit as a result.
05/07/2008 at 13:39 Leelad says:
They’re in decline because EA sport games are rushed wanky blobs of shite.
Simple. I’d rather torrent my yearly fix of fifa than actually spend money. It’s a silly admission but a true one. If i’m spending money it has to be worth it. PES 08 wasn’t much better to be fair though, Konami ballsed up nicely with that one.
Only reason to buy this year is because Hull City are in the Premiership.
05/07/2008 at 13:57 Mo says:
Yeah, sorry for the off-topicness and all. Couple of points:
MS didn’t really care about the outcome of the HD format war. Saying “the format war might of played out very differently” is irrelevant to MS, and I suspect, irrelevant to gamers.
I actually agree with you here, but don’t think it’s a bad thing. I guarantee you Sony will be doing much the same … the whole “10 years” thing is true, the PS2 is getting up there, but the PS3 is on the market. The PS4 will hit the market in a couple of years, but I don’t doubt the PS3 will be around for 10 years.
Even with BluRay, the PS3 *will* be outdated in a couple of years. Storage is just one component, right? Graphics, CPU, RAM, etc need to keep up.
That the PS3 will have a longer life than the X360 I agree with. That it’s a bad thing I do not.
(edit: also, reading your quote over again, I’d give Microsoft 2-3 years to announce a successor, not 1-2. Also, they won’t totally abandon the 360 like they did the original xbox, but yeah, still won’t last as long as the PS3)
Oh, of course. I still think that the limitation on the hardware is the 512 megs of RAM. I mean, you can have 20 gigs worth of data on disc, but if you can only load 512 megs of it at a time, you’re either (a) streaming, which BluRay seems to be too slow at doing, or (b) making a longer game, which I don’t believe is happening.
Leaving PC out of this (‘cos you know, it totally pwns everything else ;) ) I’m not convinced PS3 games benefit from BluRay. Yes, they benefit from the extra space. But considering the extra cost ($599! RIIIDGE RACER!), the slower loading times, and installations (!) I don’t think it adds up. Moreover, the PS3 has a puny 256 megs of video-ram! The installations are going to become mandatory, and they’re going to become bigger/longer. In which case, why not just use a couple of DVDs and install them disc at a time before starting your game, PC style? BluRay doesn’t offer benefits if you need to install it all onto an HDD anyway.
05/07/2008 at 15:44 Stu says:
John: well in my defence, I was posting drunk.
05/07/2008 at 15:58 Cigol says:
I don’t understand why consoles have so little RAM in the first place, especially considering it’s one of the cheapest components for a PC user. There must be a compelling reason, does anyone know?
05/07/2008 at 16:01 Stu says:
Actually, come to think of, that’s no defence at all. And now I have to drive to Cornwall in the pissing rain. Take note, people: this is what happens when you fuck with the RPS boys.
05/07/2008 at 16:19 John Walker says:
The weather is only one of our wraths.
05/07/2008 at 17:50 Robin says:
@Mo:
“I mean, you can have 20 gigs worth of data on disc, but if you can only load 512 megs of it at a time, you’re either (a) streaming, which BluRay seems to be too slow at doing, or (b) making a longer game, which I don’t believe is happening.”
Well, a HDD is always going to be better for streaming than DVD or BluRay, but loads of this generation’s games (Oblivion and GTA4 spring to mind) use streaming extensively without speed being a problem.
Developers are finding uses for multiple gigs of assets within a level. We’ve just reached the point where it’s technically (as well as economically) feasible to have unique textures throughout the environment.
“I’m not convinced PS3 games benefit from BluRay. Yes, they benefit from the extra space. But considering the extra cost ($599! RIIIDGE RACER!), the slower loading times, and installations (!) I don’t think it adds up. Moreover, the PS3 has a puny 256 megs of video-ram! The installations are going to become mandatory, and they’re going to become bigger/longer. In which case, why not just use a couple of DVDs and install them disc at a time before starting your game, PC style? BluRay doesn’t offer benefits if you need to install it all onto an HDD anyway.”
The cost has long since come down, the loading times are often offset by installations (which you can guarantee 360 games would also take advantage of if they didn’t have to support the gimped Core model).
PS3 games don’t install fully to the (smallish) HDD, they just cache the most commonly used assets. Having to do mandatory full installs of potentially 20gb+ games would rapidly fill the HDD (as well as being even more of a pain).
05/07/2008 at 20:59 Kadayi says:
“MS didn’t really care about the outcome of the HD format war. Saying “the format war might of played out very differently” is irrelevant to MS, and I suspect, irrelevant to gamers.”
I’d say a comprehensive failure on MS part to commit to a fully realized and capable next generation console system with commercial longevity in an age when increasingly a lot of games core development is built around operating in console space is of extreme relevance to gamers.
Mass effect certainly looks a lot better on the PC vs the 360 in terms of the textures, but the game still suffers needlessly the same technical constraints (such as the long lift rides during level loading) that the developers were forced to make in the 360 version in order to compensate for the lack of guaranteed hard drive. If the game had been developed for the PC in the first place, do you envisage that the developers would of chosen to go down that same route when it came to connecting the levels? Or do you think they might of attempted a more elegant background solution? I’d hazard a guess at that latter. HD-DVD and a guaranteed hard drive would have fundamentally benefited present game development considerably.
05/07/2008 at 21:42 caesarbear says:
RAM is a bit unique in market price. First it’s rather competitive, so that retail RAM does not have the same kind of markup as other computer components like GPUs. Also the price of memory is volatile; It can vary widely from year to year. A console manufacturer can’t really increase the price of a retail console if the price of memory climbs like a retail RAM product will.
More importantly, consoles are made cheap. While manufacturers usually will take a loss on consoles during it’s release phase, that is not the long term business model. MS and Sony now make very small profits on each 360 and PS3 sold and $400 simply will not buy you a ton of computing power.
05/07/2008 at 22:10 Anthony Damiani says:
One thing you’re going to want to bear in mind is the absolutely brutal pressure the EA sports studios are under to ship on time, with a new game every year. This is why their improvements are so often incremental. If what makes a good game on the PC and what makes a good game on the console diverge– and I think it does for this genre– then I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the PC version suffer.
06/07/2008 at 00:13 Mo says:
@Robin:
I haven’t played Oblivion (for shame!, I know :) ) so I’ll use GTA4. On PS3 it requires an install, xbox it doesn’t, but they’re essentially the same game. I’ve heard there’s a bit more popup on the 360 version, but it’s nothing I’ve taken issue with. I suspect installs were required on PS3 because BluRay is too slow for streaming.
Now, I’m of the opinion that installs on a console are a bad thing. They take away from the simplicity of consoles and the idea that you can pop a disc in the drive and just play. The only reason they exist is because of the BluRay “problem”.
However, I’d be open to a more clean/seamless solution. Like, when you put a game in the drive it would say “Game X will use 4 gigs, YES/NO”. Saying YES would reserve the 4 gigs of space, BUT wouldn’t fill it. Then, as you played the game, the data would stream off the disc and install/cache to that reserved space. It’s technically feasable, albeit difficult to pull off. But that’s a solution I’d be cool with. Anything that breaks the “insert disc, play” paradigm of consoles is something I’m not pleased with.
So you can understand why I’m not a fan of BluRay.
With regards to “full installs” my apologies, I didn’t word that as well as I should have. I was thinking more along the lines of 2 DVDs: disc 1 = “play disc”, disc 2 = “install disc”. Insert disc 2 to install “the most commonly used assets”, and play with disc 1. As far as I’m concerned, that negates the need for BluRay if installs are fair game.
@Kadayi:
I see what you’re saying, but we’ve seen this time and time again. Consoles aren’t as powerful as their PC counterparts, and therefore ports suffer. Here, I’ll argue the opposite in favour of Microsoft:
Sony using Cell is bad for gamers because it fragments the methods by which optimizations are made. If Sony used a more typical CPU architecture, games written for the PS3 would port easier to the PC, and wouldn’t have crazy system requirements. In an age when increasingly a lot of games core development is built around operating in console space is of extreme relevance to gamers.
I apologize for the snarkiness, but it’s a problem that has been around forever, and it isn’t fair to blame Microsoft for it.
(also, I get that Mass Effect has frequent loading times because of the xbox version, but surely the data was installed to the HDD for the PC version and therefore the load times are short?)
06/07/2008 at 01:45 Kadayi says:
Sony have zero interest in their developers porting to other platforms. Their hope is to make the PS3 as ubiquitous an item in daily life as the DVD player has become. Ultimately they expect to sell as many PS3s as they did PS2s. They honestly don’t give a shit about developers troubles porting to other platforms they have no stake hold in. Developing for the cell and other platforms at the same time is an expensive process that few development houses can afford to undertake, which suits Sony perfectly well because those platform exclusives strengthen the PS3s market position in the long term. The win for Sony with the PS3 isn’t in game sales though, but in successfully using it as the lever to win the format war. Ultimately that success is going to make far more money for them as a company through Blu-ray licensing than any amount of sales of MGS 4, GT 5 FFXIII are ever going to generate. The PS3 is a reasonably priced Blu-ray player that also happens to play games, the 360 is a games console. It’s important to understand that difference.
As for Mass Effect, yes the game does install on the HDD on the PC, but to rework the game to take full account of the PCs superior capacities Vs the 360 would of pretty much meant rewriting the entire games architecture from scratch. Something no developer is going to undertake for a port because of the inherent costs involved. Bioware gave ME a spit and polish graphically, and ironed out a few problems identified during the console release, but other than that the game is still the same in terms of how it handles level transitions (I.e. slowly).
06/07/2008 at 06:52 Skalpadda says:
About Mass Effect on PC, I felt the loading stuff you did get was fairly ok. Sure, the elevator rides took a while, but there was either some news story to listen to (which could give you a quest) or a little joke/discussion between your buddies to “mask” the time it took (I assume this was the same on 360, with the difference that the PC didn’t actually need this).
Later on when you were out in space and got loading transitions when landing on planets and travelling between systems, you just got a quick loading sequence which didn’t feel annoying to me in the least.
To me it seems that the time, effort and money it takes to develop separate controls, interfaces or gameplay mechanics that translate well is a much bigger issue. Bioware were able to do that very well, but others have certainly failed before and when the actual mechanics of gameplay suffer, that’s when it turns into a really bad port.
06/07/2008 at 07:37 Tomzor! says:
“The employees developing the game design, writing code and creating art deserve to get paid for their work. Period.”
Do the employees get royalities now? I doubt it. They will be paid the same amount whether the game is heavily pirated or not.
06/07/2008 at 07:41 Tomzor! says:
Can I start banging the anti-capitalist drum again?
06/07/2008 at 09:24 fluffy bunny says:
I just think it’s a bit interesting that Peter Moore is complaining about not making enough money off the PC games market, which he tried very hard to kill in his last job. I guess you reap what you sow, eh, Peter?
06/07/2008 at 12:02 Kadayi says:
@Skalpadda
My point is that compromises that the hardware limitations of the 360 forced upon the games original development still resonate in the PC version (which probably wouldn’t suffer them if it was developed initially for it). My issue isn’t with ME and its lifts, but I’m merely citing it as an example of a wider issue of game design being hamstrung in terms of how they operate in order to accommodate inherent console limitations.
06/07/2008 at 14:22 Mo says:
@Kadayi: Again, I get your point, by why is this Microsofts problem? All I was trying to point out was that all of the “big 3″ don’t care about how their console will affect cross-platform development, so why give MS a hard time about it? You might argue they have an interest in PC gaming because of Windows, which is true, but that’s why xbox/PC ports are relatively “effortless”. They aren’t in danger of losing their market. OSX & Linux aren’t compelling platforms for games (for more reasons than just “lack of market share”), so everything is fine as far as MS is concerned.
Of course ME is going to suffer as a result of a console port. If it wasn’t the lack of HDD, it would be (as Skalpadda said) the different control schemes (see: Gears of War). Or the differences in RAM. Or … etc, etc. All it comes down to is that a game will work best on the platform it was designed for.
Also, if ME on PC should load faster than the xbox360 version, since it’s loading off HDD as opposed to DVD.
06/07/2008 at 19:13 Ptosio says:
From 2003 up to now there were dozens FIFA games on PC (not only 04, 05, 06 etc. but also special Euro, World Cup and CL editions) that distinguished themselfs by…ehmmm…nothing? Squads, maybe? If they think thay can sell the same game 10 times, well, they’re wrong. But, of course, it’s easier to blame piracy, huh?
06/07/2008 at 20:05 Kadayi says:
@Mo
I’m not expressing a ‘problem’ with Microsoft, I’m merely highlighting how some short term decisions made by them with regard to the design and of the 360 have impacted in a detrimental manner on the development of a lot of games, which is something that I believe is pretty relevant to gamers and developers alike. It seems I’m not a lone in this viewpoint, though you seem to disagree with it, so I’ve argued my corner accordingly. You don’t seem to have presented any counter arguments to support your assertions so far. The only criticism I’d level at Microsoft is that it’s clear there was never a long term strategy for the 360 and that’s a shame for all the people who bought one.
06/07/2008 at 21:58 Skalpadda says:
@Kadayi
I understood your basic argument, and I agree with your sentiment. In the end it seems to come down to giving the console a resonable lifespan vs price and timing to not loose too much of the market. I think it’s pretty clear that the 360 was pushed out on the market way too soon, especially considering the rate at which they broke down and died. That just shows really bad attitude towards their customers.
As for Mass Effect in particular I just wanted to point out that the long elevator rides were pretty much the only bad artefact of it being a console game; pretty much everything else was improved with the port.
I did wonder if all that horrid driving around was an attempt to flirt with the console crowd though.
07/07/2008 at 01:24 sinister agent says:
I would also raise an extremely serious issue with “and deserve to see a return on investment for their risk.” No they absolutely do not! No one “deserves” anything of the sort. Companies that generate superb content with broad appeal you’d hope would see return. Companies that spend millions producing substandard products for a medium they treat dismissively deserve not to see a return. Business.
I’m glad you said that. The hint of a sense of entitlement from some companies simply because they invested money and time is pretty farcical.
EA, for all their faults, do seem to be acting in a fairly interesting fashion here. If they do come back with a fresh take on their regular sport games instead of just dropping them on the PC altogether, the results could be very interesting. My cynic sense is telling me that they’re EA and will continue to just release more rehashed football crap on the consoles and more rehashed Sims/Spore crap (I like the Sims 2, and Spore looks great, but give them time and they’ll fun them into the ground as they did with everything else. The Sims in particular was already sloppily coded by the second game) on the PC. Less time porting = more time bugfixing, or, more likely, working out how to fit in more adverts.
On the plus side, there’s a small window of opportunity for someone else to bring out some new games without FIFA et al instantly crushing them to paste. Right?
07/07/2008 at 10:44 Frymaster says:
as long as piracy muddies the waters companies will tend to blame it for weak sales – sometimes with good reason, sometimes not. It makes them see a large demand for their product (piracy increases the supply and depresses the price) which they aren’t seeing any money from – _that_ is the meaning I take from “deserves to see an ROI”. We’re all adults here; I think the phrase “companies deserve to be recompensed for people using their product” is pretty unarguable.
Do I think that without piracy these games might sell better? Not really. For me, piracy would be the only way to get one of those games onto my PC and I doubt it would ever even be installed.
I suppose this is the “hidden cost” of piracy – it gives companies something to blame to excuse a lack of innovation.
It would be interesting if more companies tied into the valve/steam encrypt-the-content-allow-preload-or-physical-install-but-only-decrypt-on-release-day steamworks system. My gut feeling is that the group of people who download a pirated copy before official release day will contain a larger proportion of people who would otherwise have pre-ordered or bought the game.
And I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the splitting up of EA was a really smart move… it appears to be driving innovation. Let’s face it, consoles are better for physically-present multiplayer, and traditional sports games are best played like that. So having the consoles concentrate on that while maybe doing something different on the PC could be a plan.
31/08/2008 at 13:45 Arkymedes says:
Dolphan – system requirements. Still, it’s a shame they don’t use the PS2 graphics engine and 360 game code, since most PCs these days have a 360-level CPU and PS2-level graphics card. But of course that would be tricky and probably require lots of work to get the animations right.
That is such a sad commentary. To say that PC’s nowadays can only reproduce the shitty PS2 graphics is just insane. What era do you live?
For your information, do you know why Crytek didn’t port their game “Crysis” to the console platform? Because nor 360 or PS3 are capable to reproduce the graphics and amount of processing. Yes, the graphics and CPU.
Consoles are only more powerful then PC’s the exact moment they are launched, and this superiority has a life span of maximum 6 months, until the latest hardware for PC’s are available. They are more expensive at this moment yes, but since you don’t buy a new console every 6 months, in the end the PC’s just surpass the capabilities of any “next-gen” console with a very affordable price.
To don’t port a game from console to PC’s with a excuse of “graphics” is just BS.
31/10/2008 at 02:50 Al says:
Moore you worthless bastard. You just got served!
Cancel NBA Live 09 for the PC? Take Two just released NBA 2k9 with NEXT GEN GRAPHICS for $19.99!!!!!!! It beats your worthless POS game in every which way but loose. I will never ever buy another EA developed or published game again. And you know what, you just encouraged me to download your worthless games in the future so you better freaking cancel all PC versions of every game. And pssst you know what? I know how to download and pirate console games too. Cancel those too you worthless bastard.
Unsincerely and with utter contempt for your @ss,
14 year customer of EA who will never again buy another EA game.
18/10/2010 at 11:21 phenom_x8 says:
Welcome to 2010……..
And 2 years later, finally EA release their ‘true nextgen’ FIFA franchise for PC but with the one year behind feature included(hey, its actually FIFA 2010 last year console version rebranded as FIFA 2011 PC). Where is those 2008 promise (PC focused franchise bla…bla…bla…)??
Gone with the wind I guess!!
Thank God PES 2011 finally able to maintain its position as the true simulation soccer game!!
Trust me, PES 2011 worth it! Except for the online part I guess! But it doesnt matter as long as I can invite over my friends to my house and see them losing, yay!!