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?
Related Stories:
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!!
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
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.
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.
Winning Eleven games were consistently better than FIFA, but the last PS3/360 incarnation is an awful, awful game.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I forgot about Moore when he started talking about profit lines and brands. No way to bring about games.
I’ll blame myself, the last EA sports game I’ve bought must have been on the Amiga.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
‘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.
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.
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.
Yeah, what happened to the 08 PC games, anyway?
…
http://www.hb-studios.com/
Yes
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.
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.
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 .
“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.
@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.
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.
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.
John: well in my defence, I was posting drunk.
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?
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.
The weather is only one of our wraths.
@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).
“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.
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.
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.
@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?)
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).