By Alec Meer on February 12th, 2010 at 3:12 pm.
No. Noooo. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. No. No. No. “Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen. We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience “Alan Wake” was on the Xbox 360 platform, so we focused on making it an Xbox 360 exclusive. Both Microsoft and Remedy have long histories in PC game development. This decision was about matching this specific game to the right platform.” Sez nasty Mister Microsoft. Nooooooooooo. There’s a trailer beneath the cut, if you wish to mourn for what might have been.
I’m going to console (hah!) myself with the entirely baseless assumption that it’s only going to be a string of glorified quick-time events.
12/02/2010 at 15:15 Ian says:
As I said about 2 nanoseconds ago when Diogo posted this on the Talk-o-Tron:
Well I’m glad we got that established.
12/02/2010 at 15:27 Bowlby says:
It really is a lame excuse, isn’t it?
12/02/2010 at 15:37 qrter says:
That statement really, really made me laugh.
Instead of saying “we just can’t be bothered anymore”, try and spin it as if you’re doing it for the good of gamers everywhere.
12/02/2010 at 16:20 Huggster says:
They port it onto PC a year later when the hype has died down and the XBOX 360 owners do not need to pirate it on their computers, as they have already bought it for xbox.
Good way to get another sales increase a year on. It also avoids pirating at release probably ( just guessing)
12/02/2010 at 15:17 noggin says:
buffoons
12/02/2010 at 15:17 jsutcliffe says:
Repeating what I just said in the forum, I never wholly believed the PC version really existed in the first place so I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s a shame though, as it’s looking like it’ll be a good game.
Also, this is bollocks: “Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen.” — I play games on my PC in front of a big TV all the time. It’s not rocket science these days, with graphics cards having HDMI outputs up the whatsit.
In fact, I find gaming in front of a monitor to be more intimate, because I don’t have the Mrs. shouting things like “Earth Clam!” or “Seasick!” whenever someone says “Earth-clan” or “C-Sec” in ME2 there.
(edit: oh dear, a bit of an understanding the point of the quotation fail there in the last sentence.)
12/02/2010 at 15:44 Lewis says:
You have the best Mrs.
12/02/2010 at 15:17 pkt-zer0 says:
Noooooooo surprise here.
12/02/2010 at 15:19 Stense says:
Oh Remedy, you used to be cool.
12/02/2010 at 15:19 SmallGods says:
From the linked article:
“In july last year Markus Maki, head of development, said that they’re focusing all their efforts on the 360 version, but will be making comments in regards to the PC at a later date. Although it now looks like this is confirmed as an Xbox 360 exclusive.”
So its not a definite cancel for the PC version then? I mean….there’s still some hope it’ll appear? Right…? Guys…?
So help me, it better turn up with all the inevitable DLC included FOR FREE, plus a PC graphical overhaul, or I will personally hunt them down with a tractor.
This smacks of disgruntled dev team forced to abandon it because of time and publisher pressure. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.
12/02/2010 at 15:19 Skeez187 says:
And Microsoft’s ritual sacrifice of PC gaming continues.
12/02/2010 at 16:04 suibhne says:
This.
What continues to puzzle me is why MS seems so eager to throw PC gaming under the train. Gaming has always been a notable driver of the Windows ecosystem, and Windows accounts for vastly more revenue than MS’s entire entertainment division, much less the XBox 360 in particular: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-income-by-division-2010-2
Either they think they have such a monopolitistic (*cough*) OS that they won’t lose sales even if they ruin PC gaming, or they’re simply incompetent. It’s almost comforting to suspect the former scenario, but I think the latter may be closer to the mark. Witness the decline of MS’s corporate structure and culture: http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Why-former-employees-say-Microsoft-cant-innovate/1265750084
12/02/2010 at 16:38 Sagan says:
Since Microsoft is no longer doing anything for Windows gaming, I wish Apple or some company from the Linux community like Canonical would take this chance to bring more games to their platforms.
I bet a lot of people (including me) would finally switch away from Windows, if there was just one good game exclusive to either Mac OS or Linux. For example if Apple got Sega games like Bayonetta, Valkyria Chronicles or the Yakuza series on Mac OS, and would maybe support Wine to get most Windows games to run, too, I think they could get the market leadership among hardcore gamers. From my personal experience, they already have a more than 50% market share among students, and that is a pretty large part of hardcore gamers, right?
12/02/2010 at 18:06 Skeez187 says:
Why would they do this to PC gaming? Some facts. Wall of text incoming…
Microsoft took on some of the head staff responsible for Dreamcast when making the Xbox. Why? because Dreamcast was the closest thing to the vision of what MS wanted in a console i.e. true multiplayer and other PC-centric features.
Xbox was made as a test, and the 360 was the full realization of their dream. MS can make much more off of the 360 than it can from Windows as they have already saturated the OS market and have entire corporations (banks, hospitals, governments) depending on their OS, email, and server applications for proper day-to-day operation. All they can really do with Windows is maintain the status quo, hence their lack of innovation as far as their applications go.
Remember the Xbox stands for Direct-X Box, essentially a nicely packaged (and well marketed) living room PC gaming system. Therefore their biggest enemy isn’t other consoles, but the PC its trying to emulate. This is why, as a friend at a major development studio has told me, MS actually subsidizes PC devs for them to lead their IPs on the 360 and that subsidy can come with a price as Remedy has become to quintessential example of.
The PC gaming community has become but a data mine for MS. Everything that is popular or has worked on the PC has and will be implemented into the Xbox line of products. Multiplayer, check. Voice chat, check. Digital distribution, check. Blockbuster FPS games, check (many devs having a pc origin). Retro games, check. The list goes on, if you look at the previous list the difference between PC and the Xbox, is where a lot of those features are free with the PC; MS makes money off of each of those features for Xbox. Xbox headsets, wireless adapters, hard drives, Live subscriptions, Live Arcade downloads, and DLC.
12/02/2010 at 21:56 ZIGS says:
I’ve been saying this all along, Microsoft’s wet dream is to get all PC gamers to drop PC gaming and start xbox gaming.
13/02/2010 at 03:40 TeeJay says:
“…All they can really do with Windows is maintain the status quo, hence their lack of innovation as far as their applications go…”
I thought they wanted to provide something to underpin a “networked home” where almost every single electronic and electrical device in a building was connected together and you would have “intelligent fridges” that would know when you ran out of milk and order more from the supermarket, intelligent power which would turn all your lights off if you were not in the room and on-demand hi-fi and TV in every room controllable by a personal handheld device.
Unless I have missed something, Windows is currently not a reliable under-pinning for something like this, so there is still plenty of potential for innovation.
Of course this is at the “high” end – the flip side is that a large part of the world’s population is just starting to get low-end computers (and unlike western markets they have got mobile phones and internet cafes first) and you can’t just assume that these new markets will simply use (and buy) same kind of Windows
12/02/2010 at 15:19 nabeel says:
: (
12/02/2010 at 15:20 john_silence says:
B… B… Boycott! Ah, it doesn’t apply, well – uprising then! Take arms! Shake your flat keyboards and 5600-dpi mice at the sky! Let us burn down Remedy’s tranquil headquarters with the fury of our overheating graphics cards! Microsoft shall suffer the wrath of the PC’s as we massively flock to the Macint… No, not that either, but we’re mighty pissed and disappointed.
Perhaps they’ll change their mind about this in due time, as many companies have done with so-called “exclusives”.
12/02/2010 at 15:20 robrob says:
I thought this had already happened. I lost interest when it became a Windows whatever-version-I-don’t-have exclusive so it is not particularly disappointing to hear it won’t be coming to the PC, I wouldn’t have had chance to play it either way.
12/02/2010 at 15:21 klasjlkjklfjakl says:
This is bullshit…
12/02/2010 at 15:22 vader says:
I must be doing something wrong when I have my PC connected to my projector in the living room.
12/02/2010 at 20:52 disperse says:
Sweet, I so want to do this.
12/02/2010 at 15:23 Spod says:
Well I’m not going to begrudge them a business decision. I expect it looked like it simply wasn’t worthwhile investing in the PC development for the game. That bullshit excuse does irk me somewhat though, the PC is ideal for psychological horror type shenanigans. Personally speaking I find it *much* easier to get really involved in a game on the PC than on a console, playing on a TV always feels that much more detached.
12/02/2010 at 15:26 JKjoker says:
its good i stopped caring about this game like 3 years ago, does it even have a release date ? because its pretty much vaporware
12/02/2010 at 15:26 Flimgoblin says:
Wait, did they just say we get a little too intimate with our PCs?
12/02/2010 at 16:03 Eplekongen says:
Well, that par is true.
12/02/2010 at 15:26 skizelo says:
Does (did) anybody care about Alan Wake? This sounds like sour grapes, I know, but seriously, I thought it had already been released and I just missed it.
Humbug on the PC snub though. Bunch of rotters.
12/02/2010 at 15:26 Tyrmot says:
What a lot of rubbish. They could at least have the good grace to be honest. Piracy? Dev costs?
‘intimacy of the PC’ = WTF?
12/02/2010 at 15:28 Heliocentric says:
I heard wibbles to this effect literally years ago. Maybe i’ll play it in the future when a 360 emulator pops up… On a pc, on my sofa.
12/02/2010 at 15:28 john_silence says:
@SmallGods: absolutely! Some hope left/but they’d better make it right/disgruntled developers.
@jsutcliffe: the PC version was most definitely not vaporware, it used to be a poster child for DirectX10, as well as innovative physics and lighting techniques. I even remember reading an article about their pretty avant-garde plans regarding quad-core processors, at a time when dual-core were still more or less the future.
I do believe Microsoft is to blame for the PC cancellation, and the real reason is that they’ve been working on this for too long and need to ship something and sell it well. And if they do, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a PC version crop up – say, about the same time as Red Dead Redemption?
12/02/2010 at 15:29 Frankle says:
Wouldn’t suprise me if the next news we hear about Remedy is that they are going bankrupt.
seems to happen to a lot of companies that concentrate on consoles over pc now.
could be coincidence but I don’t think it is.
12/02/2010 at 15:29 1nightstand says:
Sure… nothing is more suited to the living room than (what suppose to be) a psychological, horror-survivor shooter… played in the basement, it could cause severe heart failures- we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we…
12/02/2010 at 15:31 AlexW says:
Even though I haven’t been paying that much attention to the game, I stumbled a bit when the ‘intimacy’ point came up.
It’s a horror game, yes? You’re supposed to become immersed in the game world so they can better mess with your head? I would define that as the kind of area where intimacy is a good thing.
12/02/2010 at 15:31 kyrieee says:
I don’t object to their motivation because it’s an artistic one, but I don’t believe them. The reason it’s not on PC probably has more to do with money (as in piracy, 360 sales having a higher margin, 360 exclusives help the platform and makes money indirectly in the long term).
Then there’s the fact that Microsoft seem to be doing everything in their power to kill PC gaming
12/02/2010 at 15:32 duel says:
there was me thinking that Alan Wake would be perfect for the PC platform, what with its lush sprawling environment and quad core optimisation, and the fact that its coming from microsoft..
I am not pleased >:(
12/02/2010 at 15:33 James G says:
Must admit, never been hugely fond of the ‘infront of the TV’ thing. Possibly partly a result of having gone down the personal computer route (C64, Spectrum, Amiga, PC) with only occasional dips into the consoles. Also, for most my game playing I’ve not had even consoles connected up to the main tele, out of consideration for family members/flatmates, who’d rather watch TV than me play. As a result, even my console gaming has tended to be done in a similar manner to PC play. But as others have pointed out, theres nothing to stop you hooking up a PC to a TV, hell, technically mine is, even if I have it set up at a desk.
That said, Alan Wake isn’t something I’d be hugely keen on anyway. However I wouldn’t be surprised if we see this change six months after 360 release. Seems to be the way of these things. Can’t offhand think of any 360 exclusives that I’m overly bothered about. The PS3 (and PS2) have a few things I wouldn’t mind trying, and I can see myself picking up the latter before the end of the year, and the former when I decide to get a Blu-Ray player.
13/02/2010 at 04:10 Soobe says:
Quick aside–
I have a projector in the living room that I’ll often use for PC gaming, and I gotta say, a good projector has this way of making games *far* more immersive than my 22″ monitor.
Most of it has to do with the projector, even a 1080p one, smoothing out the rough edges of the picture. Not so much jagged edges mind you, but just the overall presentation. Everything looks more…natural. PC monitors, with few exceptions (Crysis for example), have this way of making things look more cartoonish and vibrant. It’s not a bad picture by any means, it’s just that they present so much detail that they start revealing flaws as well.
And of course you have the sheer size, anything under 60 inches is pointless, and so long as you have a free white wall you’ll end up with this mammoth 110′ screen. In other words, even a 55″ TV just don’t cut it because the experience, while certainly bigger than a monitor, just isn’t there yet. It’s not until you get into the 85+ inch area that things take a turn onto the Holy Shitsville exit.
My favorite example is Batman AA. I’d play for several hours on the Projector and of course, be loving it. I would then switch over to the monitor and…well…now it felt like now I was playing a game instead of experiencing one. It was always like that, and always as pronounced.
Back on topic–
That said, yes Wake would have been cool at 100″ inches on the living room wall, but I lost interest after playing Resident Evil 5, then looking at the video of Wake and seeing basically the same thing. Nothankyou.
12/02/2010 at 15:33 Taillefer says:
In the dark, on your own, is the wrong way to experience an atmospheric horror game. Of course.
12/02/2010 at 15:39 mandrill says:
Yet more proof that M$ hates PC gamers. An open platform that can be programmed for by just about anyone without having to pay M$ huge license fees? Of course they hate us. They’ve proven it time and again by foisting GFWL on us and making windows less stable than a psychopath on PCP. They suck, but they know that we’re stuck with them cos no-one releases triple A titles on any other OS.
They’d much rather everyone migrated tot their nicely ecapsulated and controlled Xbox platfor where they take a cut from every ounce of money spent on it, not only from us at the retail end but from the developers in license fees and other extortions.
12/02/2010 at 15:41 Shalrath says:
“We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience “Alan Wake” was on the Xbox 360 platform”
Help me out here, but ~two feet from my monitor vs. six~ feet from my TV – the _TV_ is more intimate? How exactly? Is it because I can sit with seven people at once?
I think he was grasping for a word and picked the wrong one.
12/02/2010 at 15:49 D says:
No, he did said “the PC is more intimate.” But then in a genius marketing stroke, failed to explain how that makes it more compelling on the console. I’m guessing he was just insulting PC’s mom.
12/02/2010 at 15:41 int says:
Just like Schafer with Brutal Legend, they have decided that their games don’t belong on a PC.
Hoping for a paltry port in some years…
12/02/2010 at 15:42 XM says:
When will game devs look at the real world.
1. There are a lot of PC players that love to sit on the couch with the PC hooked up to HDTVs
2. When has a game been made to fit where a player is sat.
3. This is a lame excuse as they just what to win the battle over PS3 sales.
4. Luckily the PC has far too many good games to play and I gave up on Alain Wake as it was another DN:Forever.
12/02/2010 at 15:45 Monchberter says:
Agreed. Some PC games do work quite well with a pad and sat on the sofa, they look tons better too. :P
12/02/2010 at 15:42 TOM WESTFALL says:
Kind of dumb talk if you ask me.
12/02/2010 at 15:43 Vadermath says:
“Long history in PC development” my arse, Microsoft! If at one point in your pathetic existence you had something to do with helping make the PC better, you stopped riding on that train ages ago. You’ve been nothing but a filthy, dirty saboteur in our midst ever since.
I’ve been waiting for this game for such a long time, and then this happens. One can always hope that it’ll go the Force Unleashed way, I suppose
12/02/2010 at 15:44 Colthor says:
Microsoft in “not publishing game on PC” shocker.
12/02/2010 at 15:44 el Chi says:
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
12/02/2010 at 15:45 AbyssUK says:
Wait.. why does my PC have an HDMI connector..oh yes for my big television screen… stupid stupid Microsoft.. I even have a 360 controller for my PC for when i don’t play decent games that require a mouse :P
12/02/2010 at 15:46 Flowerpot Wang says:
Noooooooooo…. *looks at his Xbox 360 on the floor next to his PC*
oh wait
12/02/2010 at 15:49 Radiant says:
Roughly translated this means “we need more money to finish this never ending game I haven’t seen my wife in five months I think I have two kids Microsoft have money right?”
12/02/2010 at 15:56 Seniath says:
“And a 3rd is due in 6 months… waitaminute”
12/02/2010 at 15:49 Surgeon says:
Actually, I often thought when playing Dragon Age and Mass Effect :
“To really make this experience more compelling, I seriously need to be playing this game from further away and in a lower resolution.”
12/02/2010 at 16:07 Lilliput King says:
On several occasions I was in danger of getting too intimate with the games I was playing.
I’d just like to thank Microsoft and Remedy for helping me to never cross that line again.
12/02/2010 at 17:01 Surgeon says:
Anyway, it’s much easier to lick Morrigan’s face during cut scenes when playing on the PC.
I’d have to get up off the settee and everything if I was playing on the PS3.
12/02/2010 at 15:52 sigma83 says:
Remedy is dead to me.
12/02/2010 at 15:54 Jad says:
Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen
The thing is, I hear this argument often in console vs. PC wars, and I don’t understand why people don’t push back on it more often. Because I have to imagine, for a good number of people and a good number of games, this is entirely false.
I’m not talking about hooking up a PC to a television. I’m talking about the fallacy that “relaxed, on the couch” is actually better for this kind of game.
I’m thinking back a few years ago when I was living with my parents: my PC was in my room, where I could close the door, pull down the shades, and if need be, put on headphones. The big-screen television was in our well-lit, open-to-the-rest of the house living room, where family members would frequently pass through to get to the kitchen.
If this statement was about colorful multiplayer stuff like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, or even about singleplayer, cinematic, over-the-shoulder-viewing-friendly fare like Uncharted 2, it would make sense.
But Alan Wake is a resolutely singleplayer, immersive, psychological thriller/horror game. That sounds exactly like an “intimate” experience. That sounds exactly like something that should be played with the lights out, no distractions, on the edge of your seat, nose pressed up against the screen. The antithesis of a “couch game”.
And I’ve seen this argument many times with similar games — people saying its no big deal that Bioshock’s PC implementation is flawed, or that Dead Space 2 is console-exclusive. That people don’t like the “isolated”, “anti-social” nature of PC gaming. These ARE isolationist, anti-social games! These are games about being alone, cut off from humanity, utterly immersed in a very bad situation.
I’m sure there are gamers who live alone, or who have big-screen TV and couch combos in an isolated game room or something. But I’m sure there’s an even larger number of people who have set-ups like the one I described above, where couch gaming implies frequent distractions, a social atmosphere, and a relaxed play-style. Why are such people agreeing that that is the correct way to play a game like Alan Wake?
12/02/2010 at 16:36 Lars Westergren says:
Very aptly put, Jad
12/02/2010 at 16:56 Surgeon says:
Yep, very well put.
That’s exactly how I like my gaming.
Upstairs. Blinds down. Headphones on. In the dark. Massive monitor. Sorted.
When I’m playing Uncharted 2, and the dog jumps onto my face to be let for a wee, it kind of breaks the immersion.
And squeeky toys generally don’t fit into the soundtrack very well either.
12/02/2010 at 19:51 Jad says:
Thanks for the kind words, guys. Its something that’s been banging around in my head for awhile. A plug, of sorts, I’m going to be posting this rant in somewhat expanded form on my (and my friend’s) gaming blog (click my name).
Anyway, and this is leading me off-topic, but this also speaks to me about how much the current console generation really seems to screw up the whole “couch gaming” experience.
A decade ago, when the gap between PC games and console games was much bigger, one of the things I envied most about console games was the prevalence of local, splitscreen multiplayer. I loved the hell out of QuakeWorld online gaming, but I also enjoyed four-player Goldeneye on my friend’s N64. The game was technically inferior (you couldn’t jump or fall!), the controls sucked, and the tiny piece of screen you got on my friend’s TV was much smaller than sitting up close to my monitor, but it was still a lot of fun to play with three other guys in the same room, squashed on the same couch, joking around. Instant LAN gaming.
Nowadays console games have online gameplay and all of the trappings, but I understand that many don’t include any form of local multiplayer!
I seriously don’t like the arbitrary PC complex game vs. console simple game argument that too often gets thrown around here. I think a far more useful division is between party-style or non-immersive or short-form or cinematic couch games and singleplayer or immersive or long-form or online chair-desk-room games. Played on either console or PC.
I’ve played Street Fighter IV on my couch on my PC, and if I owned an Xbox I’d play Dead Space 2 in my room, hooked up to my computer monitor.
(oh, and devs: many PC gamers have their computers hooked up to their TVs — more splitscreen PC games!)
13/02/2010 at 19:14 Nalano says:
You’re absolutely right, of course.
That said, you’re making the mistake of actually taking their fallacious arguments seriously. Sorta like Democrats, really: They’ll respond to anything with the hopes of besting their opponents in rational debate, no matter how ridiculous the original charges were.
So this lovely, rational response to a pure cynical money-grab “XBOX IS BETTER” from the company that makes XBox is like how Democrats responded to “HE’S A KENYAN PINKO” by saying, “Well, we actually called Kenya and, besides, we noted these discrepancies in the Kenyan birth certificate you claim as proof…” and thus got punked badly.
12/02/2010 at 15:55 Droniac says:
I didn’t even know it had become impossible to connect your TV to your PC!
I must be experiencing some sort of critical security leak, because my TV is magically picking up signals from my PC and processing them into pretty colored pixels after plugging in this magic wire called ‘HDMI cable’. Microsoft needs to be informed, this clearly requires an emergency update of all versions of Windows!
Remedy’s argument in favour of Xbox gaming sounds very plausible. I wouldn’t want to be intimate with my horror games either! It’s much better to experience games like F.E.A.R. 2, AvP or Alan Wake at a safe distance. A distance where you’ll be so busy squinting at the tiny letters on screen (need to keep tabs on health and ammo values) that you don’t even notice half the scares they put into the game! Much healthier gaming!
13/02/2010 at 03:49 TeeJay says:
“…I must be experiencing some sort of critical security leak, because my TV is magically picking up signals from my PC…”
…and I think my PC is a bit of a freak – it lets me go round the back and plug in a gamepad. It even likes it in the front as well! 0_0
Next someone will find out that developers have sneaked in various settings for things like screen resolution, size of text, number of speakers and the like. Disgusting!
12/02/2010 at 15:56 DangerousDan says:
This is one of the most bullshit decisions I have heard in a long time. Very unhappy. It’s like Heavy Rain all over again.
What happened to you, Remedy? What happened.
12/02/2010 at 15:57 Out Reach says:
Some £20 notes are more suited for the intimacy of my wallet, and others are best used to buy PC Games. I ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience the two £20 notes I had saved for “Alan Wake” was inside my wallet, so I focused on making it a my wallet exclusive.
12/02/2010 at 18:34 LintMan says:
@Out Reach: “wallet exclusive”. Awesome.
12/02/2010 at 16:01 Colej_uk says:
We should all just hook our PCs up to our TVs, then ask them if we can have it now.
12/02/2010 at 16:01 Heliosicle says:
This hadn’t already happened?
It was to be expected anyway, lazy Remedy/greedy Microsoft.
12/02/2010 at 16:04 nakke says:
WHAT? REMEDY? NOOoooooooooo…. Nooooooo.
12/02/2010 at 16:05 Halka says:
As long as Valve and Blizzard don’t abandon us …
/care
12/02/2010 at 16:06 faelnor says:
So Alan Wake is a game better enjoyed from the ‘comfort’ of a couch with every friend and their dog passing around while chatting about the latest album they bought, pass me the ashtray, come on stop playing for a while we’ve got to go buy some booze oh sorry I just spilled some coffee over the wiimote don’t forget to go get some booze.
We’re not missing a lot then. I’ll get intimate with some Thief FMs in the meantime.
12/02/2010 at 16:08 terry says:
It’s not often I verbally utter when looking at pages on the internet, lest other people overhear me and report the angry muttering guy in the back cube, but I genuinely said “You have to be fucking kidding me” in a disgusted, incredulous tone irl just there.
12/02/2010 at 16:10 cliffski says:
I bet this isn’t true.
they make more money from each copy, and have less piracy on consoles, so they want that version out first. They want all the PC gamers who own a console to get the PC version, rather than wait for a pirated PC copy.
Once that’s done, they will likely do a ten minute shoddy port to PC to mop up the rest of the cash.
Its no great loss anyway, the best PC games are PC-only designed to work to the strengths of the platform, not shoddy afterthought ports from inferior machines.
Good riddance.
12/02/2010 at 16:18 Lilliput King says:
Might be that. I’m tempted to think it has more to do with this whole ‘exclusive’ shabang they got going on.
Isn’t Heavy Rain PS3 exclusive? Maybe this is Microsoft’s answer. Or possibly the studio is somewhat beleaguered after the insanely long development time and need funds to keep afloat. An exclusive deal from Microsoft would secure that, for a while.
This is all speculation, of course, and I don’t really care enough to research it.
12/02/2010 at 16:22 Huggster says:
Exactly what I thought / said just now cliffskiiola
12/02/2010 at 16:41 Sagan says:
I bet this is true.
Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Halo 3. A lot of recent Microsoft games didn’t come to the PC. I don’t even know what has been the last PC game from Microsoft. Certainly nothing in recent years.
12/02/2010 at 17:04 James G says:
Yep, dead on the money. To this I’d also add that by making it a 360 exclusive through the initial period of heavy marketing, they also can use it to bolster the 360 ‘brand.’ While MS have done their best to also brand PC gaming they have largely failed, partly due to the fact they mistakenly tired to apply the same tactics which had worked on the 360 to a fundamentally different market.* As a result dual marketing to the 360 and GFW brands will only serve to dilute the 360 marketing.
Under a standard cycle I might have assumed the initial focus on the 360 was to reduced the increased development time for simultaneously focusing on two platforms. In past years, the eyes would already be on the 360′s successor, and any major releases would get lost in the next gen hype if delayed for too long now. However thanks to the recession and a general slow down in the sheer growth of computing power/requirements it seems this stage is delayed.
* I’ll avoid conspiracy and assume incompetence over malevolence.
12/02/2010 at 16:10 Javier-de-Ass says:
hehe. I’d written this off a long time ago like many others. fuck microsoft, right in the hole.
12/02/2010 at 16:10 Smeghammer says:
Piracy.
12/02/2010 at 17:29 rocketman71 says:
Xbox Live subscriptions
12/02/2010 at 19:00 Smeghammer says:
indeed
12/02/2010 at 16:13 ShadowNate says:
Such a shame. I’ve been watching AW from the beginning, and at some point Remedy (via the official Alan Wake forums) was asking people to further promote the game (http://forum.alanwake.com/showthread.php?t=38) because I guess there were some obstacles with the funding/production. We helped.
And now we get this shitty nonsensicle statement (- this comes from Microsoft, but it still is a kick in the balls).
12/02/2010 at 16:16 Lucas says:
When MS bought Bungie they scaled Halo down enormously. How is this surprising?
12/02/2010 at 16:20 lhzr says:
now if they’d have announced that beyond good and evil 2 , stalker 2 or witcher 2 would be console exclusives, it would’ve been a different matter, but crying over.. alan’s wake ? come on. it’s gonna be just another alone in the dark.
screw generic console 3rd person action adventures, they’re all the same.
12/02/2010 at 16:20 Rick says:
Aww, that looked like that had potential. Ah well, RIP Alan Wake, because I’m sure as shit not going to further line Microsoft’s pockets by getting a console.
12/02/2010 at 16:20 Eggy says:
I’m well beyond caring about this game after the last few years, but good luck selling this to the halo kiddies microsoft.
12/02/2010 at 16:22 Lars Westergren says:
I sort of suspect this is going to be a three hour game anyway…
No need to cry over spilled milk unless you know for sure it was really tasty, I’ll await the reviews before unleashing the nerd rage.
:)
12/02/2010 at 16:23 DMJ says:
What sort of weird world is this in which the maker of Windows is one of the biggest enemies of PC gaming?
13/02/2010 at 19:21 Nalano says:
When was Windows ever friendly to gaming?
12/02/2010 at 16:23 Wulf says:
Their excuse is just silly. It’s meant to be played from the couch? Okay, fine, but what about the PS3? Does the PS3 not provide the same levels of couch-based intimacy that the 360 does? Are they implying that PS3 owners are healthy, intelligent people, whereas 360 owners are mindless couch potatoes? Are you implying that PS3 owners are incapable of knowing and loving in their furniture in the way that only a 360 owner can? What are you saying to us, Remedy?
All in all, this is pretty funny, but hardly surprising. I’m not angry that it’s lost, I’ll just stay loyal to people who develop for the PC (/Mac/Linux).
12/02/2010 at 16:36 Sweedums says:
lol i was thinking the same thing, i think it should read
“Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen. We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience “Alan Wake” was on the Xbox 360 platform because Microsoft paid us so much money to make it exclusive, we couldn’t resist”
nevermind, i’m sure we will have plenty of other, intimate games that we can play when its out :P
12/02/2010 at 16:51 invisiblejesus says:
“Okay, fine, but what about the PS3?”
For what it’s worth, they’re probably saying that the PS3 is a bitch to code for and has a smaller user base, much of which also own 360s anyway. That seems to be the usual reasoning for skipping it, and from what I understand it’s more or less true.
12/02/2010 at 17:36 Wulf says:
Not quite the point though, invisible.
The point–and the humour therein–was how they made a direct connection between couch potatoes and 360 gamers. If the 360 was my first love, I would’ve been cringing as I read that. Instead, I got to laugh, since it really was very amusing.
To me, it just reads like: O ya, 360 gamers are total couch potatoes, we make games that couch potatoes would like, so that works out for us. Yanno?
12/02/2010 at 16:24 V. Tchitcherine says:
Wow, this is quite depressing news as I’ve been following the progress of this game for years ever since the very first and highly-impressive tech demo. This game looks fucking amazing in every regard and the gameplay trailers on you tube are breathtaking. I can’t stress enough that the atmosphere and sense of immersion conveyed by mere flash videos of gameplay are virtually peerless.
Damnit, I need a scapegoat… uh… MICROSOFT! Remedy just wanted to make a dual-platform game, a simple game about a troubled writer and you slick, big-city super-corporation offered them millions of dollars for exclusivity to your console on pain of not receiving millions of dollars. Hopefully there will be a Mass Effect situation and the game is eventually ported from the Xbox360 after receiving critical acclaim.
12/02/2010 at 16:24 GoldenNugget says:
I’m kind of pissed about this but the latest trailers of this game make it like a third person actiony game similar to the latest resident evil games. I was hoping for it to be more mystery and escaping an unknown enemy in panic with limited supplies instead of shining light on shadow monsters and then shooting them to kill them.
12/02/2010 at 16:26 HermitUK says:
This could easily be another “We’ll port it in 9 months” sort of decision. That said, the footage that came out of E3 last year looked rather like an RE4 clone with a flashlight gun.
Will still pick up the 360 version if it turns out to be a classic, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
12/02/2010 at 16:47 Flint says:
Although even if such a port would happen, it’d be pretty certain it was bogged down by heavy usage of GFWL.
12/02/2010 at 16:30 Jackdaw says:
I remember when Alan Wake was advertised to be a Windows Vista exclusive, showing off the shiny new and awesome DX10. Considered to be a spiritual sequel to Max Payne.
…
12/02/2010 at 16:30 Knark says:
Yawn, … the new STALKER will do just fine for me then.
12/02/2010 at 16:39 Vinraith says:
My but that’s an awfully long-winded way to say “we don’t want your money.” They should learn to be more concise.
12/02/2010 at 16:40 oceanclub says:
The way things are going, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it was announced that World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was going to be an XBox 360 exclusive. A chirpy Bobby Kotick will announce that this method means that PC owners can avail of “ancillary bonuses” – that is, the chance to either fuck off or buy an XBox 360.
P.
12/02/2010 at 16:47 jonfitt says:
With this and GFWL, we can only assume that Microsoft hates PC gaming.
12/02/2010 at 16:52 HermitUK says:
Hardly surprising. With the 360 they get money from the hardware sales themselves, plus all the income from LIVE and game sales.
On the PC, gaming doesn’t really earn Microsoft much beyond whatever they’re getting from GFWL. They’ve no vested interest in seeing the PC games market boom. People will still buy Windows either way.
12/02/2010 at 17:18 Cinnamon says:
The whole XBox project has lost them literally billions of dollars since it was thought of while PC has earn’t them, what? A lot more than that at least. It seems counterproductive to pressure people into buying a cheap console that they don’t make much money on when they could be selling a big fat Windows 7 licence.
12/02/2010 at 18:05 Gorgeras says:
I think it’s about time more people realised this. The sooner a viable alternative to the Windows platform comes for PC gaming, the better. Microsoft are now the worst thing to happen to it and they are deliberately so. Let them try and stay afloat on the strength of the crapBox and LIVE alone.
12/02/2010 at 18:52 FunkyBadger says:
Gorgy: yeah, I bet they hardly made any money on, say Modern warfare 2, for example.
12/02/2010 at 19:27 pkt-zer0 says:
Here‘s a contrary opinion, which I found quite interesting considering it’s coming from Christian Svensson.
12/02/2010 at 20:07 Cinnamon says:
@pkt-zer0; That is totally in line with what I am saying about games being released for Windows helping Microsoft as a whole as much or maybe more than an XBox release. The question is that do the XBox people care about that when they are money hatting a game then making really strange comments about intimacy? Do the windows people agree that windows 7 is a bad platform for “intimate” games?
12/02/2010 at 20:48 disperse says:
I really think Microsoft would be shooting themselves in the foot if they stopped supporting PC Gaming. Personally, if it weren’t for PC Gaming, I would move to Linux in a heartbeat.
12/02/2010 at 23:28 Gorgeras says:
Badger, in my best Dwayne ‘The Rock Johnson voice: it doesn’t matter about your triple A title sales. Activision have still been making layoffs. GTA IV sold a bomb, Take-two and Rockstar are still heading for the poor-house. Part of the problem with being a public company is that it isn’t about how good you are, but how good some speculators think you will be in the future.
You could make your argument about any big franchise in the 90s: Mario, Sonic, Lara Croft and all three of their property owners have come close to disaster. Microsoft needs the PC and if they keep kicking it, it will bite. *No* western games developer has ever made a successful ongoing franchise without the PC, with only the most strained exceptions and even they fall apart after a short span. Japan manages without it for very specific reasons unique to the way the eastern market works, but it doesn’t apply here.
If Microsoft wants to try treading water in that ocean, they’re very welcome.
13/02/2010 at 19:23 Nalano says:
Indeed. It’s not the current sales that prop them up; it’s the loans they get for the next game’s production and development. And those kinds of loans have dried up completely.
12/02/2010 at 16:52 SomeCallMeDave says:
I thought they were developing Alan Wake so it ran specially well with Quad Core systems, guess that was all BS, fuck MS and I never thought i’d see myself type this, but fuck Remedy too!
12/02/2010 at 17:02 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Fuck ‘em all..
12/02/2010 at 17:01 Hmm says:
Minimum Requirements:
No intimate settings.
Comfy seat. (Large leather couch recommended).
Viewed from 4 feet away.
40 inch TV (50 inch recommended).
Gullible.
13/02/2010 at 19:25 Nalano says:
Also upcoming in the news: Microsoft’s hostile takeover of LG.
12/02/2010 at 17:21 LionsPhil says:
Why on Earth is RPS linking to a Machinma-watermarked quality-crippled reupload of the trailer?
Also, lolz, PC gaming is dying. Don’t worry, Microsoft, I’m sure everyone will be singing your praises again the next time you bump the version number of DirectX—I’d expect a six-page glossy spread in PC GAMER.
13/02/2010 at 23:31 Wulf says:
“Also, lolz, PC gaming is dying.”
I know you were being ironic but one element of gaming does seem to be moving away from the PC, the exceedingly mainstream sort.
If anything is even slightly niche, slightly off-the-wall, slightly risque, slightly high brow, or slightly indie it’ll have a home on the PC. That’ll never change. Though I’m hoping we’ll all leave Microsoft behind one of these days, I’d love to have that future of PC gaming on Linux, I truly would.
12/02/2010 at 17:26 Benjamin says:
That statement is utter nonsense. What the fuck is that supposed to even mean? This is like when someone breaks up with you and says, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
“Dear god… we can’t have this psychological thriller feel like an intimate experience. People will go MAD I tell you… MAAAAAD!”
The fact they have to lie about why they aren’t making a PC version is the most insulting part. I just wish they would be honest about it. This statement not only makes them look stupid, it also acts as a slap in the face.
12/02/2010 at 17:28 oceanclub says:
“Hardly surprising. With the 360 they get money from the hardware sales themselves, plus all the income from LIVE and game sales.”
Don’t Microsoft _lose_ money on XBox hardware sales? Indeed, as far as I know – I’m open to being contradicted – they have still to make a profit on the XBox (possibly this only refers to the original ).
P.
12/02/2010 at 19:27 Carra says:
Only the wii is making profits from hardware sales.
12/02/2010 at 17:32 Anthony Damiani says:
Apparently, Microsoft feels that the best way for me to play Alan Wake is: not at all.
12/02/2010 at 17:41 LintMan says:
What a preposterous reason to not support the PC… The PC is too intimate? What, Alan Wake is some Beer ‘n Chips game game like Madden 2010?
If they’re not even going to try to come up with a real reaon, why don’t they just say they’ve got to shampoo their hair that day, or wash their cat or something.
12/02/2010 at 17:43 DarkFenix says:
*Shrug*
It looked promising, but as a new and unproven title I had few hopes for it. It was certainly enticing enough to buy on PC, but I won’t fork out money to buy a game on a sub-standard platform.
Fair enough, Microsoft don’t want my money. Suits me, plenty of other games out there.
12/02/2010 at 17:46 Steve says:
I admit that i’ve been watching for this for a while but given the recent information released about the game i can’t say that i’m surprised.
Honestly now, who wants to buy alone in the dark for the PC twice?
12/02/2010 at 17:56 mrrobsa says:
Just wanted to register my intense disappointment at this decision. I have sneaking suspicion maybe it will be one of those timed Xbox release which the industry seems quite fond of recently, maybe thats just wishful thinking.
Recent media for this game has been impressive, I have followed it all the way through production, and if they don’t want my money then fine, but whoever at Remedy/Microsoft took this decision is an idiot and shouldnt be surprised if it eventually does get released on PC and flops because PC gamers have moved on to other titles that embrace the platform.
Yah boo sucks.
12/02/2010 at 18:00 Buemba says:
“This decision was about matching this specific game to the right platform.”
And as we know Microsoft is all about tailoring each game to the platform that suits it best. Case in point: Halo Wars. We all know RTS are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV, right? God forbid I try to play an atmospheric single player mystery/horror game in the more intimate system, as clearly the experience wouldn’t be benefited by my immersion in the world.
At this point what would Microsoft consider a good match to the PC platform besides flight sims and (I imagine) MMOs?
It’s bad enough they scrapped the PC version of Alan’s Wake, but now they feel the need to call us all idiots too?
12/02/2010 at 19:19 Forscythe says:
@Buemba
“At this point what would Microsoft consider a good match to the PC platform besides flight sims and (I imagine) MMOs?”
I believe that point was early 2009 when Microsoft laid off the flight simulator team and closed Ensemble.
At this point Microsoft hasn’t developed or published a PC title in almost two and half years.
12/02/2010 at 18:00 the_fanciest_of_pants says:
All I can muster is;
FUCK YOU REMEDY, FUCK YOU.
Goddamnit. I really wanted Stephen King meets Max Payne.. God DAMNIT.
12/02/2010 at 18:07 neolith says:
That statement from MS ist a big pile of crap.
Good thing I wasn’t that interested in Alan Wake any more since they announced that the game needs to be scaled/dumbed down of work for the average 360 user…
12/02/2010 at 18:54 FunkyBadger says:
Its lucky that its only games PC owners weren’t interested in that get canned.
12/02/2010 at 18:07 SupaleetBaka says:
*cries* snif… cough…
Well, atleast this gives me a reason to still own a console.
12/02/2010 at 18:09 John Roberts says:
Wow, thats like totally crazy dude, I mean really.
Jess
http://www.online-anonymity.cz.tc
12/02/2010 at 18:14 Jakkar says:
Allow me to sum up community feeling;
Fuck them all to death =\
12/02/2010 at 18:17 oceanclub says:
Since Chris Early was dumped as head of Games for Windows, has anyone else actually been assigned to that position? Or are Microsoft not even pretending to have a strategy?
P.
12/02/2010 at 18:19 FunkyLlama says:
I take solace in the fact that shooters that are better-suited to consoles are generally shit.
12/02/2010 at 18:22 Amnesiac says:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
I was looking forward to this. Apparently not enough to pick up a 360 but still…
…Boooo…Hissss.
12/02/2010 at 18:23 Nerd Rage says:
360 exclusivity confuses me sometimes. I mean I can understand wanting to keep something off the PS3, but the PC too? Maybe my memory is inaccurate, but I’m pretty sure Microsoft also sells a rather popular PC operating system and created a special program for games to be released on that particular OS. Seems like it would benefit them either way, so all I can think then is that Remedy must have said “F this!” to GFWL and MS didn’t argue too much because they’re focusing entirely on the 360 as a result.
12/02/2010 at 18:40 Hmm says:
We need an alternative to Windows when it comes to gaming. Right now. Microsoft is the worst thing to have happened to PC gaming since… ever. What used to be a company promoting PCs is now its biggest enemy that someone needs to stop.
In the meantime – sorry, it has to be said – Fuck you, Microsoft and FUCK YOU, REMEDY.
FUCK. YOU. FUCK. YOU. You sellouts, I bought Max Payne, bought Max Payne 2 and this is how you repay me.
12/02/2010 at 18:41 Johnny says:
Wierd. I had assumed this had been canceled by now.
12/02/2010 at 18:56 Urthman says:
So much stupid here, I hardly know where to begin.
1. The couch. There is only one sense in which a couch is obviously superior to a chair, and that is when the game is best with someone sitting next to you. Same screen co-op/multiplayer, games which are fun to pass the controller, games that are particularly fun to watch someone else play all qualify. Single-player survival horror? Not so much.
2. Larger screen. Yes, you can attach your computer to a big screen TV if you like, but more importantly, most computer monitors are subjectively bigger than most big-screen TVs. They are displaying at much higher resolution and fill a greater percentage of your field of view. So if “it looks better on a TV” means anything, it means “our game looks like crap if you blow it up too big and look too closely”
3. Sit back. This could possibly make sense. I can see how your art direction could go in different directions depending on whether you’re designing scenes to be looked at from a distance or close up. But in practice, the problem is only going from PC to console, not the other way around. I’ve played games on consoles that seem like they’d be more immersive if you were sitting closer to the screen (Metroid Prime, I’m looking at you), but I’ve never, ever played a game on PC (including tons of emulated console games) and thought, “Aaa! Too close! This would be so much better if I could sit back six feet away from the screen.”
12/02/2010 at 19:04 El Stevo says:
But… I play my 360 through my PC monitor.
12/02/2010 at 19:46 Lilliput King says:
Getting intimate with your 360?
You disgust me, sir.
12/02/2010 at 19:09 Argie Player says:
“We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience “Alan Wake” was on the Xbox 360 platform, so we focused on making it an Xbox 360 exclusive.”
ahhhh cheap excuses, what would developers do without them?
12/02/2010 at 19:30 Nemon says:
Yeah, well a big bucket of fuck you from me too.
12/02/2010 at 19:34 rhY says:
That’s fine, way to lose money!!
12/02/2010 at 19:42 DVSBSTD says:
Translation: it turned out to be a dumbed down consolised game we’d be ashamed to show to PC gamers.
12/02/2010 at 19:53 TheApologist says:
Hear hear
12/02/2010 at 19:55 TheApologist says:
This was @ Wulf
/restrains complain about reply system
12/02/2010 at 19:54 TheApologist says:
Tossers.
We all know the 360 exclusivity strategy. Why be such a schmuck and lie about it?
12/02/2010 at 20:27 Felix says:
this is a problem for me as well. I play DDO (yes, there are those of us who still do) and there is a puzzle for completing a raid (old MasterMind based puzzle) that requires distinguishing between Yellow, Orange and Green images… all three of the look exactly the same to me… also they have blue and purple which also look the same to me… I know HOW to do the puzzle, I just can’t because I can’t distinguish these colors.
Makes it hard to lead the raid.
12/02/2010 at 20:29 Felix says:
oops… that screwed up… was supposed to be under the colourblind article.
12/02/2010 at 20:37 Chaz says:
Ha! Colour blind and a fool.
12/02/2010 at 20:50 Brumisator says:
Since when has RPS been publishing old news?
This was “revealed” months and months ago.
As for the PR line, oh what a pathetic excuse, couches Vs. PC chairs, especially if you remember the old Alan Wake videos years ago, demonstrating the power of PC multicore processing for physics.
12/02/2010 at 20:51 Ed says:
I was incredibly excited about this one, ooh, about 4 years ago? I even bought a new PC specifically to play it… progressive news updates made me progressively less enthused, to the point where I literally don’t give a shit about this game.
I’m surprised they took this long to announce that it was going to be just for console tards.
12/02/2010 at 23:29 Metalfish says:
“tards.”
Your choice of insult for a group of people who indulge in the more or less the same hobby as you says more about you than them.
If you’re allowed to generalise everyone with a xbox as a mental deficient , then I’m allowed to call you a petulant, elitist little nipple.
*insert smilie face that makes insulting someone okay for some reason*
12/02/2010 at 23:39 MD says:
“I literally don’t give a shit”
I think that’s probably a relief for everyone involved.
13/02/2010 at 02:10 Pantsman says:
Well, that’s kind of disappointing.
*moves on*
13/02/2010 at 02:11 Pantsman says:
That was not meant to be a reply.
13/02/2010 at 10:45 Ed says:
@Metalfish: You are indeed allowed to call me a petulant, elitist little nipple. I applaud your forthrightness, and the fact that it’s quite a witty insult.
However, you may have completely missed my point when you started frothing indignantly, which was not that all console owners are mentally deficient (I am also a console owner, although maybe that’s a bad example…), but rather that the potential scope of the game will be reduced (dumbed down, if you will) to fit the format.
There was certainly no deliberately malicious or insulting intent put into my use of the term “console tard”.
13/02/2010 at 10:46 terry says:
I wish I could frame this part of the thread.
12/02/2010 at 20:59 j says:
My girlfriend bought her quadcore gaming computer in 2007 in order to play Alan Wake when it was released. Tough luck.
12/02/2010 at 21:03 Whelp says:
What a load of bullshit.
12/02/2010 at 21:03 Klaus says:
Unfortunately, I don’t care anymore. And I just wrote it to show how much I don’t care. Which is not very much.
12/02/2010 at 21:19 Tom says:
It’s so annoying when devs/publishers feed you blatant BS. Insulting is probably a better word.
12/02/2010 at 21:25 Rei Onryou says:
I’d love to hear an honest response to this from Remedy. Cut out the marketing and business crap, I want to hear Sam Lake’s honest to god answer for why this has happened. We probably wouldn’t react this bad if we weren’t being fobbed off with a poor excuse.
Now, do I get it on the 360 because I love Remedy, or boycott it because I hate Microsoft’s treatment of PC gaming?
13/02/2010 at 07:25 Spacewalk says:
You could rent it and support your local video store.
12/02/2010 at 21:29 Vague-rant says:
I thought it had been a 360 exclusive for a while? In any case I’m much more disappointed at not being able to play Heavy Rain on PC than Alan Wake…
Also, I agree with everyone else, the reason is BS. On the other hand if for their next game they make it a PC exclusive and provide the reason that it suited the ‘intimacy of the PC’, I might be inclined to believe them
13/02/2010 at 09:35 Quercus says:
@ Vague-rant – No major publisher is EVER going to make a game PC only.
13/02/2010 at 19:28 Nalano says:
Valve.
13/02/2010 at 23:56 invisiblejesus says:
It’s been a very long time since Valve has made a PC-only game. In fact, I think everything other than Ricochet has turned up on the consoles in one form or another.
16/02/2010 at 12:15 Lill says:
@Quercus
Actiblizzard has a hole range of PC exclusives coming out of Blizzard. Gas Powered Games just announced a PC exclusive and released Demigod not too long ago.
EA has Command and Conquer 4, and Dragon Age, you could probably say, seeing as the console versions were rather different and an outsourced afterthought to the PC version.
Then there’s SEGA with Creative Assembly’s Total War.
I hear you though, there are not many PC exclusives about anymore. There are still some though, you have to admit.
12/02/2010 at 21:42 Thrawny says:
I never understood all the fuss about this game, it just looked like silent hill with fancy graphics.
/me shrugs
13/02/2010 at 02:42 StarDrowned says:
Though I don’t think that’s it, I’m sure a lot of people would be very happy with just that.
12/02/2010 at 21:51 Roberto says:
Translation: “Our game is four years late as it is, so we’re going to cut down our workload by dropping development to one platform.”
12/02/2010 at 21:54 Vandelay says:
Pretty certain that I heard this a very long time ago (or more precisely, they were saying that they had no plans for the PC version at the time, but it may happen sometime afterwards, with the may not sounding very optimistic.) Disappointing news, nevertheless.
I was quite intrigued by this one initially. It seemed to not be your average shooter, with it looking like something a little more subdued. The talk about having to fight your enemies with light made it sound as if they were really looking to alternatives to sticking a gun in your character’s hands, or at least making that gun less effective. It coming from the people that made Max Payne just made it more interesting.
But the recent gameplay footage they showed made it look like a fairly run of the mill third person shooter. There was the light mechanic, but it looked mostly to be turning the flash light on them and then shooting them, or throwing a flare on the ground open up a whole can of whoop ass. My guess, Microsoft made them rein in some of their plans and take things back to the drawing board, probably to make things a bit more “mainstream”. It would explain the exceptionally long development time.
Still, I was interested to see how it turned. Even if it did turn out to be just another shooter I’m sure it would have been a great shooter, judging by Remedy’s past work.
12/02/2010 at 21:55 AsubstanceD says:
so they are suggesting that a psychological horror game is not better suited to the “intimacy” of the PC?
12/02/2010 at 22:04 jsutcliffe says:
[basically off-topic]
I really don’t understand why, but every time I read this topic title I get Kyuss’s Allen’s Wrench in my head. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNz3bMamt5s
[/basically off-topic]
12/02/2010 at 22:22 Corrupt_Tiki says:
Bah who cares,
I only buy racing games for my xbox360 – they are the only game type that suck balls on PC.
In the case of this game, if it’s any good I might just try dig up a **cough**emulator**cough**
You seen nothing -_-
13/02/2010 at 00:57 Lilliput King says:
A 360 emulator?
I snort at your ignorance.
13/02/2010 at 00:58 StenL says:
@Corrupt_Tiki
Seriously, a X360 emulator ? That won’t be out for years.
13/02/2010 at 03:29 Urthman says:
We don’t even have playable emulation for the original Xbox yet (which I find astonishing, given how similar it to a PC). Xbox 360 is probably 5-6 years away, minimum.
(On the other hand, playable Wii emulation happened much, much sooner than I would have guessed. There may be some element of luck involved – the right programmer taking interest and having the right insights, maybe? It’s all magic to me.)
13/02/2010 at 09:06 Optimaximal says:
I read it was because the Wii really was just two GameCubes duct-taped together!
That they got Wii emulation working in Dolphin (GC emulator) speaks loads…
14/02/2010 at 08:27 Bootes says:
The Xbox was basically a PowerMac G5. All the current generation consoles are running PowerPC processors. This is a major problem for emulation. If you ever tried VirtualPC or similar programs on old PowerPC Macs to try and run Windows, you’d know the huge performance hit that it takes to translate between the CPU types.
12/02/2010 at 22:26 destroy.all.monsters says:
I suspect this decision will hurt Remedy more than they know. Microsoft is one seriously dysfunctional company when the xbox was originally supposed to funnel development to direct x and the pc. Idiots.
12/02/2010 at 22:28 poop says:
remember when the game was a pc exclusive with nonlinier daytime exploration and exciting horror-max payne esque combat at night and not a console exclusive cover based quicktime event fest?
oh well, I always liked that logo that shows up at the end of the trailers
12/02/2010 at 22:48 MacQ says:
Corporate bullshit.
This is very much like the Ubisoft bullshit statement, that the constant online connection to their servers will make the game experience better.
12/02/2010 at 22:59 hoff says:
If anyone wants proof that this is Microsofts decision and not a creative decision by developer Remedy, here’s an announcement from last June: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a165168/remedy-alan-wake-is-xbox-360-exclusive.html
12/02/2010 at 23:03 Popular Energy Drink says:
Up yours, Microsoft!
I’m going to cry silently in my bed now.
12/02/2010 at 23:10 Nick says:
Dear potential customers: we think you are stupid.
Love and hugs,
MS
12/02/2010 at 23:18 Davie says:
I had honestly never heard of this game before this news post, and after watching the trailer, I hate Microsoft even more. Bunch of bloody stupid bullshitting hypocrites, they are.
12/02/2010 at 23:18 Navagon says:
What happened to the blatant honesty Microsoft used to use to address situations like this? They have said in the past that decisions like this were made for the purposes of generating 360 sales.
13/02/2010 at 00:07 captainpuke says:
I hate it when they come up with these excuses. Most of us are adult(ish) or something – why is it a no go? I was not that interested so I am not too broken up about it.
13/02/2010 at 00:08 Caiman says:
There must be something seriously wrong with the PC version then. For a game releasing this year, to can it so late?
13/02/2010 at 01:06 Jake says:
bitches.
13/02/2010 at 01:07 blargh says:
What 360 emulator? PCSX2 (the best PS2 emulator) still barely runs some games right.
360 and PS3 emulators won’t be out for years to come… if ever.
13/02/2010 at 01:08 blargh says:
Damn broken reply system. -.-
13/02/2010 at 03:25 Wedge says:
All this really does is confirm the game is now a shitty run of the mill cinematic over-the-shoulder console shooter. If you want to experience something like what I imagine they originally intended this game to be, try checking out Silent Hill: Shattered Memories… on the Wii. Yes it’s a Wii game. And while it has plenty of flaws, I think the bold ideas behind the game design are probably closer to what Alan Wake was originally trying to do, though likely on a less linear path.
13/02/2010 at 03:41 Tommo says:
Am i the only one who HASN’T heard of this game? After watching the trailer it looks like another over-the-shoulder view just like every other console game that when ported to the PC makes me feel like my IQ has been sucked out by 10points.
13/02/2010 at 03:46 MD says:
I’m not a fan of over-the-shoulder cameras either. But wtf is the connection between camera type/angle and IQ?
13/02/2010 at 03:55 Jin says:
F*** those guys! i hope the game sucks and sells crap!
13/02/2010 at 04:05 Jin says:
for those guys saying steam sucks -> in your face! steam is the only thing keeping pc gaming alive. for these guys (microsoft and others like them) pc is worthless. they want to sell consoles and games for them, where there is almost no piracy. If this game was intended to be released on steam i’m sure it wouldn’t be canceled! steam is now the most profitable pc gaming platform…
13/02/2010 at 09:12 Optimaximal says:
I think you’ll find that the PC is a pretty big money-spinner for Microsoft… Hell, the core reason Windows survives outside of the corporate sector is gaming.
The problem is the people who make the decisions see the consoles as some magical be-all/end-all money pit and are focusing attention there, despite the fact that both Sony & MS are haemorrhaging money from their entertainment divisions like mad.
13/02/2010 at 04:10 bill says:
I must admit that I lost whatever interest i had in this a long time ago. The only real reason anyone was interested was the developer, the game never looked all that special, and gradually looked less and less original as time went on.
It never looked as good as the first half of Dark Corners of the Earth.
13/02/2010 at 04:41 Jayt says:
Hope the game bombs
13/02/2010 at 04:54 toomany says:
What goddamn arseholes.
13/02/2010 at 06:12 redrain85 says:
Meh. Pretty much knew this was going to happen. Microsoft pretends they still give a shit about PC gaming, but in reality they don’t. They are being completely dishonest here and have a huge conflict of interest going on, sabotaging PC releases now whenever they can.
The only way to stop this lunacy is to split the Windows Gaming division (if it even exists any more) out of the Xbox/Entertainment division and put it under the control of the Windows team. Then have the two divisions enter friendly competition with each other. Each eventually gets to share the other’s innovations, after an exclusivity period.
As long as Windows Gaming is under the thumb of the Xbox division, this shit will continue.
13/02/2010 at 07:54 tomeoftom says:
Wow, a lot of anger flaring up in this here thread (which, admittedly, I don’t condemn). Microsoft should really stop being so reliant upon the apparent idiocy of its customers, and cease the delusions that most people playing games on PC are stupid enough to buy into their pathetic marketing-speak excuses.
EDIT: That headline picture is amazingly hilarious.
13/02/2010 at 08:34 Dreamhacker says:
Although the game is vaporware, this decision is so wrong that the Microsoft games division should take their responsibility and resign immediately.
13/02/2010 at 09:38 Quercus says:
Microsoft and their XBox “exclusives” have done more harm to PC gaming that anyone else. The fact that PCs sell their own operating system seems to have escaped them.
If someone came up with a viable alternative OS for PC gaming I would leap at it.
13/02/2010 at 10:07 TheSombreroKid says:
microsoft must not realise that the day pc gaming dies is the day the windows os dies, the only thing tying the vast majority of the trend setters to windows is directx.
13/02/2010 at 10:07 The Pink Ninja says:
Annoying, but as far as I can tell it had decayed hideously from what was first advertised and thus what had caught my eye.
It had basically become a horror corridor shooter and thus of little interest to me.
13/02/2010 at 10:27 Ravenger says:
I really wish that for once game developers/publishers wouldn’t assume that we’re all stupid and that they can pull the wool over our eyes with marketing speak.
Statements like the one for Alan Wake and the many ludicrous ones for MW2 (“It’s not balanced for lean”) lose a tremendous amount of customer goodwill. Though I don’t suppose that matters much when you’re deliberately losing customers by no longer releasing the product that they wish to buy.
13/02/2010 at 10:33 Fitz says:
I know! Let’s boycott Alan Wake on the PC! That’ll show those Micro$oft bastards.
13/02/2010 at 10:40 TheSombreroKid says:
This statement made me laugh out load.
13/02/2010 at 10:41 TheSombreroKid says:
I mean loud. Now i know why we use the TLA.
13/02/2010 at 10:49 Faraan Anwar says:
After there poor sales of GTA DLSs even the mighty 50millions rubbish investment wasn’t prevented ROCKSTAR to launch it for PS3-PC. I am pretty sure it will come to PC. And when it will, I hope it sells less then 10,000. What a trash horror corridor crawler. Seriously who play these games and WHY???
13/02/2010 at 10:58 Guildenstern says:
10 euros on it sucking anyway, to be honest. We’ll see.
13/02/2010 at 11:26 Fitz says:
Who’s going to be the first person to blame low sales on the PC to piracy then?
13/02/2010 at 19:32 Nalano says:
Better yet: Blame the low PC sales to the superiority of the console platform.
Because it’s never about the quality of the game. Never! Halo was the best FPS ever made. Except for all the others.
13/02/2010 at 11:30 clive dunn says:
I lost all interest in this game when they made the absurd decision to get rid of Alans scarf. I mean wtf were they thinking. Anti-scarf mother fuckers!
btw, i am not being ironic or sarcastic, i really wanted a cool survival horror scarf game. I just like scarves!
13/02/2010 at 12:03 The Great Wayne says:
Less piracy on the consoles, you must be kidding, right ?
13/02/2010 at 13:22 PHeMoX says:
Too bad for them, as I won’t buy it if it’s Xbox360 exclusive.
13/02/2010 at 13:34 shooo says:
I think it’s about time we’ve all moved to Linux or another viable alternative. If only developers would start supporting open-platforms instead of Windows and DirectX, I would switch in an instant! Make the move, damn it, and put an end to Microsoft’s monopoly already!
Eh, who am I kidding…
13/02/2010 at 14:42 alinkdeejay says:
One has to wonder why they even write these BS explanations in the first place. Who would fall for it? Maybe casual gamers who are not into the gaming scene, if the news is forwarded to magazines and sites about gaming. It would be the poorest journalism if they just give out these statements when they’re obvious lies, I can’t see this happening.
Only the most hardcore fans actually read these statements by the developers, and they never believe them anyway. Waste of a job to have someone sugarcoat bad news like this, since nobody who reads it actually believes it.
Cut out the entire marketing and PR departments that don’t do the adds, and finance a PC version with the money you gain.
13/02/2010 at 16:20 william says:
“Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen…”
This made me laugh. I guess they’ve never hooked up to a PC to a large-screen TV. Wasn’t that the whole point of Windows Media Center Edition?
13/02/2010 at 17:04 Jetsetlemming says:
That statement from Microsoft is pretty funny, I can’t remember the last time they made a PC exclusive game. They dissolved their flight sim and RTS studios a couple years ago after all (after forcing the RTS studio to make the console exclusive Halo Wars). Maybe they’re counting the visually upgraded versions of Minesweeper and Solitaire that are in Vista?
13/02/2010 at 19:10 MinisterofDOOM says:
Am I the only one who finds the title of this game irritating and even off-putting? Who the hell is “Alan Wake?” Since I haven’t played the game, I can’t really know the answer to that question. Naming your game after the unheard-of protagonist tells people nothing of value. Titles are supposed to mean something…and not just to people who have already finished the game. Imagine if Blade Runner had been called “Rick Deckard” or Half Life titled “Gordon Freeman.”
13/02/2010 at 19:33 Nalano says:
“Max Payne.”
13/02/2010 at 20:12 joseph says:
Yes, you are the only one.
You really think ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘Half-Life’ tells anyone anything of value / about the story?
And who’s to say “wake” isn’t some reference to him having to wake up to something or whatever? And either way, who cares?
13/02/2010 at 20:34 Nick says:
A. Wake.
*sigh*
13/02/2010 at 21:32 MinisterofDOOM says:
Max Payne works, because it sounds like “max pain” which means something.
No, I don’t think HL or Blade Runner would have told different stories. But those are examples of titles that were chosen to tell you something. They have deeper meaning, but the immediate image those titles conjure gives an idea of what the game/film is about. Alan Wake only tells me there’s some guy with a stupid last name. And yes, I caught the “wake up” part. That’s no better. Naming your game after your main character who is named after something that happens to the main character is even worse than simply naming your game after its main character. Gordon Shootsaliensintheface! Rick Retiresreplicants. Yeah, that’s a whole lot better.
13/02/2010 at 21:37 Nalano says:
Duke Nukem.
Tho honestly, while ‘Blade Runner’ is evocative in a way that ‘Alan Wake’ is not, it’s no more explanatory towards what’s actually in the product. There is no running on blades, for instance.
So when you get down to it, it’s just a marketing decision of dubious worth, and as such why are we wasting our time talking about marketing and not content?
13/02/2010 at 19:53 clive dunn says:
Just going back to the scarf issue. I seem to remember the scarf being quietly dropped from the game a few months ago. I wonder if this coincided with the decision to drop AW on the PC.
I can imagine the boardroom discussion,
Suit 1. “We’ve got to save a few dollars on this one, i say drop the PC.
Suit 2. “second that. Those bastards will only pirate it anyway”
Suit 3 “So we go x-box exclusive, that’s good for me, but just one thing….”
Suit 1 “…yeah, what is it?”
Suit 3 “well, that latest research on our x-box customers told us that there are some ‘issues’ regarding the design of the game”
Suit 1 “Issues, what fucking issues?”
Suit 3 “well, the ‘scarf’ thing isn’t playing well in the mid-west; they reckon only faggots wear scarves”
Suit 1 “Christ! Right, get Remedy on the line, that fucking scarf’s got to go”
13/02/2010 at 20:22 Nalano says:
Because there’s absolutely nothing homoerotic about Army of Two.
13/02/2010 at 20:24 Thatidiot says:
Well that’s a dick move.
13/02/2010 at 20:44 GRIMDARK says:
Considering I can’t play Alan Wake on my 360 either cause the piece of shit bricked itself, Remedy can go fuck themselves.
14/02/2010 at 11:17 Antsy says:
Yep, my third and final 360 died at 10months old. Considering i’ve never received a functioning xbox 360 from the repair center, it looks like I’ll never play Alan Wake.
13/02/2010 at 22:56 Initialised says:
[i] “Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen.[/i] So where does this leave me? I play couch based games on PC with a PS3 controller set up to emulate an XBox 360 controller and the more in your face games only about a metre from the ‘[i]Larger TV Screen[/i]‘ (50″ PDP). Am I not allowed the best of both worlds on the best platform?
14/02/2010 at 04:54 Vinraith says:
@Initialized
on PC with a PS3 controller set up to emulate an XBox 360 controller
How’d you pull that off?
14/02/2010 at 12:53 UW says:
@Vinraith: I use a bit of software called Motioninjoy, it works really well. If you have a bluetooth adapter you can use it wirelessly as well. The drivers aren’t “digitally signed” though, so forcing Windows to use them can be a real pain sometimes. Especially 64-bit Windows 7.
14/02/2010 at 04:37 Stromko says:
If it’s not good enough to release on the PC, then it’s not good enough to buy for my X-Box 360 either.
Making a game exclusive means that it can’t compete with games on the excluded platforms. Alan Wake is likely going to be a dated Quick-time-athon, which can pass for an okay game on a console so long as the story is good, but which would get about an abysmal rating if released on PC.
14/02/2010 at 08:23 Bootes says:
On the Xbox MS makes money from every game sold, every accessory sold, and anyone that wants to play multiplayer. On the PC they only make money by selling the OS and nothing if the OS is pirated. They want people to play games on an Xbox and are hoping most people will stick with Windows on their computers because it’s what they’re used to.
I see this being a major part of their downfall. Gaming is really the only area where users are required to run Windows. Macs are nicer looking and easier to use while having a big enough software library. Apple doesn’t really sell low end machines, but Linux is free and is perfectly fine for the average person if they just plan on using IM, emal, and a web browser. I don’t see MS going out of business or anything, but I definitely see them losing their control over the computer market. They made a good decision in entering the console market, but they’re making a bad one in trying to kill PC gaming. They should be trying to take control over both gaming markets, not actively destroying the one they already have control of.
14/02/2010 at 09:37 Shadowcat says:
Agreed. I don’t understand why people come out with these sorts of idiotic justifications. We all understand that there may be business reasons for not releasing on a particular platform. We may hate that fact, but at least we can believe them.
What I hate is being told the kind of bull that Tim Schafer and this guy both came out with, which implies that the ONLY reason they are abandoning the PC platform is because the game is more suited to being played on a sofa with a controller in front of a TV. That may well be true, but to state that as the reason for dropping a platform is just insulting.
14/02/2010 at 11:38 Guy Cole says:
“We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience “Alan Wake”….”
…would be to actually release it? Finally? Maybe? One day?
14/02/2010 at 14:13 Saskwach says:
Guys, no matter how much you think you’ve customised your rig to ‘maximise intimacy’ You Are Wrong. Microsoft says so. You could place your computer in your bedroom, turn off the lights, put on headphones and sit at eye-strainingly close distances until only your peripheral vision registered this “RL” we hear of; but Microsoft assures me I have the more intimate experience sitting on my couch in a (necessarily) brightly lit lounge room with my family streaming in and out, talking as they go.
14/02/2010 at 17:39 DefMech says:
Super Mario Brothers
14/02/2010 at 18:00 Awake says:
Another one of those game industry PR botches. They would’ve been better off not saying at all. Hell, there’s more money to made in flat out screwing PC gamers (ala Infinity Ward) then trying to justify it behind lame excuses.
15/02/2010 at 00:07 whalleywhat says:
Intimate: bullet-time action game.
Not intimate: Twin Peaks inspired writer/detective game, cloaked in darkness.
Everyone knows why they’re doing this, I don’t see why it’s necessary for some PR dunce to spit in our collective eye with obvious BS.
15/02/2010 at 00:13 whalleywhat says:
I also get really tired of seeing piracy loom over all of these discussions. I guess the idea is that if the game were available on PC, people who had spent money on a gaming PC and a 360 would choose to pirate the game, when they will buy it if it’s only on the 360. Feel free to prove that. Otherwise, they would just be giving up sales on an entire new platform because some people who’d never buy the game get to play it for free. Piracy is the eternal red herring, it’s about pushing their platform and smothering the GFW brand in its crib.
15/02/2010 at 00:56 Quests says:
Hahah! Didn’t i always tell you, tho it was about Brutal Legend?
You always denied the fact that there are simply genres fit for PC and genres fit for console.
15/02/2010 at 12:16 trindermon says:
“Hi , we are running short on cash to finish our bloatware game, MS paid us a fortune to make it xbox only”
am i synical?
15/02/2010 at 18:05 martin says:
15/02/2010 at 19:25 Quests says:
Present !
Im not a customer tho, i wanna believe these words because i think PC is just for wargames and rts. Any message that discourages action games on PC is welcome.
Also, how would i know, maybe he really means it. I use quotes and words for what they are.
16/02/2010 at 11:53 Lill says:
@Initialised
Yep, one of the first things I did after I got my HDTV a few years back was to get a 10 meter HDMI-cable and a wireless 360 receiver. I play games on the sofa all the time on my PC. This they can keep though, I wouldn’t play anything where I’d have to point and shoot from there – I need the precision only the “intimacy” of my
PCdesktop can give for that.22/02/2010 at 23:16 martin says:
great point, i totally sign that!