Comments on: On the PC, Only the Maximum Settings Are Canon

By: name

name — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:51:42 +0000

no thats the problem, its not because were in the middle of a console generation.
1 its because PC games are not selling as well as console games, and are pirated much, much, much more than PSP or 360 games.
2 games these days are so dam expensive developers want to release their games on as many systems as possible to maximize sales market.
IF developers created their games for PC, pushed the system to the limits than made the changes required for consoles this would not be a problem.
but thats not whats happening.
im not saying PC games are not better than console games, specs wise.
im saying the old days where PC games use to look like a full generation above console games is sadly gone.
i cant see us gamers getting another crysis, because of costs and such.
games better than crysis obviously, but games to come out exclusive to the PC and be years ahead of the competition.
i cant see that happening ever again, sadly :(

By: Martyn Zachary

Martyn Zachary — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:03:56 +0000

I'd have to agree with Levelhead - Grand Theft Auto IV would be a curious example, for instance, of how a developer chooses to treat the PC conversion vastly differently by taking into account the vast breadth of the PC install base, also prolonging the potential visual life of the game by allowing customization options that were not possible at the time of release.

Operating system cycles and Microsoft's insistence on iterating DirectX, too, force players to update. But this is all beside the point, right?

By: nabeel

nabeel — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:55:43 +0000

name: “The eternal cycle that plagues us PC gamers is the constant need to upgrade our hardware, to keep up with the newest and shiniest games” that could not be more false! ive been a enthusiast PC gamer for over 10 years and have always kept up to speed with the latest tech.but now days that is not necessary.

Admittedly, I was generalising and being a bit cynical, but if you’ve been gaming on the PC for long enough, that’s the conventional attitude. It’s only less of an issue at this point in time because we are in the middle of a console cycle, one that is perpetuating for longer than usual. Once the new batch of next-gen consoles are released, the cycle will start over, and the GTX295 will be struggling to push the polygons.

By: LevelHead

LevelHead — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:26:31 +0000

Sorry, meant to say very few PS3 games are in native 1080p. Play Batman on the PC with the highest settings and see the difference.

By: LevelHead

LevelHead — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:24:49 +0000

Trouble is Uncharted 2 and other PS3 games are not in native 1080p. You can set PC settings to beyond that I believe. You can also play games at faster frame rates. This is the problem with consoles because developers constantly try to push it as far as they can so what ends up happening is developers like Insomniac will no longer be doing 60fps games so that they can get better visuals. You can have both on the PC.
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By: name

name — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 09:55:39 +0000

“The eternal cycle that plagues us PC gamers is the constant need to upgrade our hardware, to keep up with the newest and shiniest games”
that could not be more false!
ive been a enthusiast PC gamer for over 10 years and have always kept up to speed with the latest tech.but now days that is not necessary.
what is the most demanding PC game?
crysis.
this year i built a 3K PC so i could play games the way they were meant to be played, i was expecting PC games to be leaps and bounds above console games the way they use to be.
but boy, O boy! was i wrong.
crysis is absolutely beautiful! the best looking game ever released, better than uncharted 2.
but thats about it, take batman AA, left for dead, left for dead 2, gears of war, unreal tournament 3, far cry 2, F.E.A.R, F.E.A.R 2, fallout 3, DMC4.
any PC game released in the last 3 years is better but not that much better than the console counterpart.
where are the PC games like crysis?
look at the ps3, every 6 months a new game is coming out raising the bar, same for the 360, but PC?
crysis is the best the PC has to offer and its a 2007 game :(
come on, what is the point of the new I7 processors, or ATIs new DX11 video cards?
if 2008 hardware can run crysis i want to see what 2010 hardware can give me.
every 6 months there is a new console game raising the bar for consoles, i want the same for PCs.
if a 2007 game looks like crysis i want to see what a 2010 game could look like.
and i aint waiting for RAGE, crysis 2 or half life 2 epp 3, because by the time those are out my great grandkids will have great grankids!

By: LevelHead

LevelHead — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:26:32 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to invest into PC gaming. Who wouldn’t want the best possible gaming experience. However I just like knowing my games on my consoles don’t take effort on my part to constantly stay on top. OnLive seems to mix the two and maybe that will be a major shift in how we move forward.
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I guess in a sense this is why there are so many arguments between console owners because game so and so looks better on one platform than the other. Especially between the PS3 and Xbox 360 community. On the PC you feel obliged to keep upgrading because you know it can look better and run smoother. This doesn’t work well on consoles. The hard drive on the PS2 and the add-on memory on the N64 are two examples. You then create a two-tiered system of the haves and have nots so it’s just easier to release a new system every 5 or so years. Microsoft is kind of stuck because they have to cater to the lowest common denominator and this means games must run without a hard drive even though they could be improved. It could be a messy endeavor especially if the PS3 takes off and becomes the lead platform.
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Anyways I’m seriously thinking of getting into PC gaming. I feel it’s less restrictive and the games are cheaper but I want to see how OnLive does first.

By: nabeel

nabeel — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 20:01:23 +0000

Good point, Levelhead. Even if the hardware of the consoles stays unchanged, developers continue to improve their rendering code and squeeze more performance out of the machines, resulting in increasingly better-looking games in the same console cycle.

By: LevelHead

LevelHead — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:19:02 +0000

I think that’s the problem I know I will face. I want to be able to have the best settings just like I wanted a 1080p HDTV. I know that I have quite some time before we see anything sharper than blu-ray and 3-d gaming and viewing isn’t that desirable for me and it looks like that’s where we are headed first. I can see improvements on my Xbox 360 and PS3 games every year and the system itself doesn’t upgrade so to me that’s more feasable than this desire to have the latest video cards that come out more often than new gaming consoles.