In the article, Bach argues that the consoles are holding PC gaming back. Because the majority of developers continue to view the consoles as "the superior platform" for gaming, they start development of new games there instead of on the PC. Bach says that by doing this, the vastly superior processing power of the PC is never harnessed.
Most games are actually still based on the same core idea that the consoles are your focus, the superior platform or something. I don’t know why. That was the truth 5 years ago, but the world has moved on. PCs are way more powerful than the consoles today and there are actually almost zero games out there that actually use the benefits of this.
He then discusses his solution to the problem, one that I wish more developers would use. Sonic Team, are you listening?
So for our target of what we want to hit, we are now using the more powerful platform to try and prove what we see gaming being in the future rather than using the lowest common denominator, instead of developing it for the consoles and then just adding higher resolution textures and anti-aliasing for the PC version. We're do it the other way around, we start with the highest-end technology that we can come up with and then scale it back to the consoles.
I agree with Bach on this subject -- I've even touched briefly on the topic right here on this blog. It would be nice if developers would do a better job of targeting the PC community when creating games. When they port console games to the PC, they usually don't bother adding any additional features or effects that can be handled more easily by a PC graphics card.
Case in point: think back to version 3 of Phantasy Star Online for the GameCube and Xbox. There were parts of Episode 2 in the GameCube version that featured great water effects. (Yes, at 256x192 the effects are a little difficult to see -- to better see what's going on, try browsing YouTube for some videos, or play the game!)
However, when PSO: Blue Burst was released, those effects were surprisingly absent. PCs at the time were more than capable of displaying them, so what happened?
It turns out that the Blue Burst PC code was ported from the Xbox version of the game, which lacked the water effects. Similar effects in the Seabed level were either missing or badly ported. (Also see: telepipes).
Of course, Phantasy Star Universe and its expansions suffer from a similar problem. Since that game was originally developed on (and ported from) the PS2, it lacks the ability to take advantage of features on modern-day graphics cards.
Thanks to these two examples, I generally try to steer clear of games that have been ported to the PC from a console, whether it be the PS3 or Xbox 360. There are some instances where the developer writes the game for consoles and later releases a texture patch to make the game look prettier on PCs; such was the case for the PC version of Dragon Age II, which got a DirectX 11 patch shortly after release. However, most developers don't do this and such games are few and far between.
This, among other things, is why I fear a console version of Phantasy Star Online 2. I've been fairly optimistic so far because neither Sega nor Sonic Team have indicated that a console version of the game is coming. Hopefully that doesn't change.
Sources:
DICE to Focus on the PC with Battlefield 3 (GeForce.com)
Hi-Res Texture Pack for Dragon Age 2 Available (TomsHardware.com)
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