PC gaming needs a “Games for Windows”-like initiative
The other day I was having a conversation with a friend, and he said something that I had been thinking lately. He said…
"I give up on PC gaming, Im going to do all my gaming on consoles"
Its not because he thinks consoles are better, its just that games lately have been performing very badly on his PC. He said he is tired of having to turn all of the graphic features and resolutions down to play games. Ive been going through the same thoughts in my mind, its part of the reason why I reinstalled my OS, hoping for better performance. Lately Ive played quite a few PC games…Hellgate London, Call of duty 4, Timeshift. The thing I notice is that I’m having to turn things down a lot more than I had to before. And Im not talking about a long time ago when I say before. I’m talking about 4-5 months ago. Really, its been this last batch of PC games. They have been real dogs on my system.
When I look at the Games for Windows initiative that Microsoft is trying to market and start to play these poorly optimized games, I’m starting to think that something like what Microsoft is trying to do is what we need. When you play a game on a console, that game is optimized and developed to look as good as it possibly can within the limitations of that console. Its not that consoles are more powerful, game developers just don’t try as hard to get more out of moderate PCs. It makes no sense to me to see a game run decently on say an Xbox 360, but horribly on a moderate PC even after you turn everything down to where it looks a lot worse than the 360.
To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, lets take Half life 2 episode 2. On my PC, its looks good, and runs nicely, looks better than it does on my 360 (and it looks good on the 360). Thats what I would expect. Then you take Call of duty 4. It looks better on my PC than it does on my 360 (again it looks good on my 360) but it is pretty much unplayable on my PC. I start to turn off and lower things on my PC version, eventually it looks like a 2 year old game but it still runs bad. At that point I’m thinking whats the point of not playing it on the 360. The same with Timeshift. Then you go to games like Hellgate London, that really looks horrible and runs badly too. PC game developers need to start doing for the PC what they do for the console or they are going to become a very small market.
When I think about it, it seems like PC game makers look at PC gamers as the tinkering types. Like we all sit around building PCs with the latest components. They dont really care about making the game look and run smoothly on anything but the absolute best. If they wanted to, they can do better, and they do when it comes to putting a game on a console. There needs to be something out there that forces them to have the same performance goals.
Games For Windows is the answer, but Microsoft is going about it all wrong. Instead of creating a standard that will help PC gaming, they are creating a platform they hope to monetize the same way they monetize the Xbox 360. And they are doing a poor job at even getting that done. I would like to see PC developers get together and create a target system spec. Not saying that they cant make their games have benefits for people with higher specs, but that target spec would be something they would optimize like they would do if it were to be released on a console. If gamers have to turn their state of the art video games into 2 year old games graphically to play them on their 6 month old PC, they will one day come to the same conclusion that my friend has came to. Play games on their consoles and thats it.
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November 18th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
With COD4 and a bunch of multiplatform games, I think they are built for the console first and then ported to the PC. Thus, I don’t think it’s as scalable as games that are made for the PC. That doesn’t explain Hellgate, though.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:03 am
That really doesn’t explain Call of duty 4 either. it runs well on the PS3 and Xbox 360, which is 2 different platforms and 2 different development architectures. even though it is developed for the console, they still have to pass certain q&a requirements before it is released. So they do what it takes to get the games to run perfectly, or at least well.
On the PC they don’t have those requirements, they need them.
If they start building a game with the Xbox 360 as lead skew (which is how a lot of them are made lately). They have to port it to the PS3, which is a different monster, then the PC which is somewhat similar to the 360. They put forth effort to get the games to run well when they are porting around to different consoles but they don’t care when it comes to PC? probably the most flexible out of
November 21st, 2007 at 8:16 am
Its really exceptional. But how can anyone make this in a short time. Thanks for sharing. I hope for the best. At the same time I will wait for the next surprise!
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Uhh it must be some kind of hardware problem or incompatibility or you got something hauling your processor or memory ( try checking the system, try to monitor performance, task manager for cpu utilization, some software knows how to haul 100% of your cpu by default.. ive recently had problems on my hp laptop and vista installed, but it was hp’s dpagent program that installs on default that was causing problems ) so check for all those things… xboxes are similar to pc’s just a lowered down version i guess… try checking other things would be better i guess
May 11th, 2009 at 5:42 am
PC games and console games having huge different tipe. I just have one think, the game where build first from console never same if its playing on PC.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:11 am
I really can’t be bothered with PC games any more. Lazy developers just can’t be bothered to cater for anything other than the high end. At least with a console they’re forced to work to a fixed spec.