I'm making a new rig, and I've to say I'm surprised by how much gaming power you can get from cheap components these days. You can make a Crysis-able rig for even less than $400, using a athlon 440 or quad 635 and a GTX460, and it would be much more powerful than an X360 or PS3 which BTW cant even RUN that game, not even at VGA res. Sure those consoles are 5 years old, but guess what? one rig I've laying around its even older, and it runs anything from DeadSpace to Fallout3, and it was midend when I made it. On the other hand my brand-new (in 1999) PIII rig with Voodoo3 could barely match my Dreamcast, and it was worth over 6 times the price of the console. That todays consoles are overpriced (specially compared to older generations) its a no-brainer, what has no explanation its all the dev-hate towards PCs citing piracy issues, while every console (even iPods!) except for the PS3 can be "buttraped"-hacked by software in minutes. You don't even need a modchip anymore!
You've managed to run a 3-year-old game on $400 worth of hardware? Is that really cause for celebration? You may also want to dig up the interview where the head of the Crysis team recanted and said that yeah, of course it could be ported to 360/PS3. The real issue is how much would have to be cut. It'll be interesting to see how Crysis 2 shapes up visually. I wonder how many times this has been discussed here before. The difference is in the scale of piracy. PC piracy is the by far the easiest, the most common, and therefore the most threatening to developers. It's not like they woke up one morning and decided to hate the platform, is it? Be rational. (I look forward to you taking the above completely out of context, responding to things I never said, and working in a few personal insults, like you always do.)
How in the hell could you misread that? and even then, in what planet was the GTX460 released 3 years ago? or any of those CPUs? Thats brand-new hardware Admit that you had NO point and had to deliberately change my post to make it read like that. Seriously, not even a 3-year old iMac would cost $400, much less a PC, and where did you get that 3 from? I said 5... Your Crysis point is mute: you could run HL2 on a PS2, but you'll have to scale back ALL the graphics, remove the physics engine and even then it would run at 20FPS tops, but then it would be a completely different game. And speaking of Crysis 2, that one already looks older/crappier than the original, which was released in 2007! PC piracy seems easier, until you have to deal with all the bugs the rip created, while most people cant even learn to copy the crack. On the other side, you can get your X360/Wii/DS/PSP/iPod hacked in one simple step by software (or get someone else to do it) JUST ONCE, and then you download all the games you wants and run them hassle-free.
I'm not sure I'd call it cheaper. A good rig is still going to set you back for as much, if not more, then a console. Sure you'll render out at a higher res but really i'm fine with 720p gaming. Probably the huge benefit to PC gaming is Steam and it's amazing sales. Yet new PC games keep coming out at prices on par with Console games and Console games them selves (specially anything EA or UBI) in recent years have deep price drops with in a matter of 4-6 months (like to $20 range). On top of that, you don't have to put up with any of the copy protection for consoles.
I used the best price/performance combination, anything beyond that means a lot of $$$ for a few fps more. This thing can play Crysis all maxed out, not at 120FPS like a dual 5870+1090TBE would, but that one will cost you over $2,000. Yeah but that has more to do with Steam being DoD. Newell said that he could get a profit of $30 on a $50 game sold by Steam, while retail would give him just 7 bucks. How much you get for a $20 game sold in a store? $2.50?
That is not really the point i'm making. new PC games are coming out on PAR with console games and not $10-$20 cheaper like they use to. The only cost benifit to going PC is buying games through Steam Sales. Yet again, the other point I was making was console games, with the exception to a few or 1st party software, does not stay at $60 for long like it use to. You can pick up big name 360 & ps3 games 6 months later for $20/$30 vs $60. As for the publisher not making money, at that point it's more about shifting out stock then it is about making a profit. So it's a moot point.
IMO that has more to do with the level of competition in the console market, where selling expensive often means not selling at all. And I meant the money the developer makes, since Newell AFAIK meant what he made in Steam compared to Sierra
I said a 3 year old game. When lecturing people about misreading your posts it helps if you don't misread their post yourself. This is complete nonsense, and you know it. Why don't you just admit it when you're wrong? The only platform there that's competing with the PC in any real sense is the 360, and it's far from a single step hack - and that's assuming you can find a console with the right dashboard in the first place. All of the rest require either specialist hardware (DS) or a decent amount of research into firmware revisions. Anyone who is capable of cracking the hardware and downloading games for those platforms is more than capable of running a cracked PC game. Piracy on the PC platform is easier and more convenient, it requires no extra hardware or custom firmware, and that's why it's the major problem it is. QED.
First off it's not ANY 3-year old game, you still need a workstation to play Crysis with everything maxed-out. If knew anything you would remember that back then it was unplayable even in highend rigs at the gamer settings. That even the latest IGP (NOT GPU) from AMD can run Crysis in XGA while consoles like the X360 can't even try to shows clearly the technological gap between the two, and therefore price, since you can make that rig I mentioned with the money of an Elite+kinect. Let alone the FACT that it does OTHER THINGS. And specialized hardware? DS its still a console, which uses the most common CPU know to man: ARM. Have you seen the custom firmwares as of late? its ONE file, it installs automatically, you have to be a brain-dead idiot to brick your console these days. And once you have it, thats all, just download the games and burn 'em/copy to memory. But PC piracy? a lot of cracks dont work, there are TONS of bugs, and let alone the problems with different hardware combinations: if those are bad on the legal version the pirated one is 10x worse. For the average joe it's easier to learn to hack a console or pay someone to do it ONCE, ratter than spend hours trying to figure out why he can't make the game run on a PC EACH time he downloads a new one.
You still need specialised hardware, i.e. a flash cart. Just because you say it doesn't make it so. Let's end this here. PC game piracy is a much bigger problem than console/handheld game piracy. This is a cold, hard fact, and for all your ranting you can't change it.
Wow, a flash adapter (flash carts are soooo 2003) those are only available in like...EVERYWHERE, for even less than a game, and come with instructions and everything, not that you cant find the same by just searching for "DS hacks" but it beats PC games which come with a txt that reads "copy crack" and nothing else. And how does that work for you? The fact is that the entire chinese market and 95% of latin america, all of the middle east and africa, and most of asia, they all use pirated consoles over PCs since console hardware is cheaper there compared to PCs, in part because the markets are unregulated. In china alone games are legally banned though not enforced, so the entire grey market goes unaccounted for, since smugglers dont pay taxes you know... You started this shit, deal with it.
You're moaning about developers shitting on the PC platform and favouring consoles, yet apparently you are unable to connect the dots as to why this might be the case. You started this thread, you deal with it. You're the one with an issue here. If you can't see the writing on the wall, then honestly, the problem doesn't lie at my end, and I'm tired of repeating myself.
It requires a cart as someone else said in the thread, regardless of how common they may be, it is still specialized hardware. It does nothing but load game images, and homebrew software. I believe you're talking about the PSP in this case. There aren't really custom firmwares for the DS, with the exception of the old FlashME and one other one that have long since been rendered useless by the Slot-1 solutions for the DS. Most cracks however do work, and are readily available, and require little to no technical knowledge to apply. There are also bugs with many of the piracy solutions on the various consoles; the easiest one being the DS, the flashcarts regularly have updated loaders, and the games themselves are cracked to avoid the copy protection. However, for XB360 piracy you need a fair bit of technical knowledge to flash the drive firmware and the like to get it to pass copied games, not to mention the fact that MS has released different versions of the security specifically in response to piracy. Even with the PSP things aren't quite as simple as you lay them out to be, not all games run on all versions of the PSP firmware, same with homebrew as well. There are now loaders for the games requiring newer versions, but older homebrew often does not have such an option. Last but not least, the PS3 simply hasn't been hacked to run copied games, sure there are a few homebrew demos and such, but pulling of those hacks requires a pretty significant investment in hardware and sheer knowledge. Which kind of negates your claim of doing 'hacking a console ONCE', at least in the case of the 360, DS, PSP, PS3. If that doesn't show that PC piracy is easier I'm not sure what would.
I'm going to post randomly out of the blue just to say a few things. To the Crysis statement, I can play the game at 23-30fps 720p on most settings maxed out with a 1.8ghz core2duo, and a ATI4670. Not a workstation, it's an office PC from late 2005 with a older midrange graphics card added. It was unplayable back then because they didn't really care about optimizing the game, and the only also only optimizing they did for the game was for Nvidea cards. Since then they have patched the game, making the game run smoother and better by fixing the bloated game. Now to the PC piracy. I'm going to assume you are mentally retarded or have the worst luck ever, as 99% of cracks work perfectly, all they are is a replacement of the game's executable with DRM removed and do not differ at all to the normal retail game in terms of gameplay. Now on the other hand, let us take a softmodded Wii for example. You need to update internal firmware files a lot of the time when a new game comes out in order for the game to function correctly. Don't like the Wii as an example? Let's take the DS. Most flashcarts need you to update the firmware, or patch the rom itself with a crack before playing. Don't like it either? Let's take a 360. To JTAG it takes technical ability, and you also need to remove the entire casing, and solder the motherboard. Hope I don't get yelled at for bringing this thread back up again after a week, but I just read it and couldn't hold back my rage.
Consoles offer a quick and easy solution for gaming for the majority of the population. Its dedicated hardware may be obsolete 3 months after release but for most people its still good enough. I think resourceful users have always been able to build insane gaming rigs for cheap prices but pc gaming at a high level like crysis is a niche market and maybe always has been. Standard consumers want the easy to set up console that they buy at kmart ready to use. Thet have no interest in video cards and most dont even know what that is. The biggest advantage of consoles is that the hardware never changes so zero compatability issues. Believe it or not console game piracy is a problem but not as rampant as you think. If that was the case nobody would be buying wii games since you can soft mod one blindfolded its so easy. Yet they are constant top selling games.
This. Exactly to be frank. With PC's it's not USER Friendly enough. You have to configure too much shit. And you are even in worse luck if your hardware setup decides to take an issue with the game or your drivers. Or a billion other stupid fucking things. Consoles all you have to do is put in the game and turn it on. Pc's are great for those who can deal with all the crap and who are used to it and I am one of those . But I still prefer console gaming and I personally feel it will always be vastly superior because of the sheer simplicity of it all. Regardless of out of date hardware. A good developer can take outdated hardware and make an amazing looking game with it. Ex: Games like Bayonetta MGS4 KZ2 Uncharted 2 Halo 3(yes, sue me)and so on
I haven't pirated a PC game in ages, but when I'd looked for No CD Cracks and things like that I never had any of the issues you speak of. Also it makes no sense, why would the "pirated version" have worse bugs? It's the same code, minus the copy protection. However you do have a point that PC gaming suffers from the huge number of hardware and software configurations that are out there. There is a huge number of people that have bought PC games only to find out their PC can't run it cause their hardware is out of date, or they have problems because their drivers are out of date, OS, or who knows what else. This also hurts the development of the games since you have to test alot more than you do with a static console system. It helps to have a standard. But it also helps to be able to push technology forward constantly rather than in 6 or 7 year console life cycles. Personally I don't play much on my PC. WarCraft 3, StarCraft 2, maybe Sim City if I'm bored. If there is a shooter I'd rather play it on the 360.
